I currently live and play on five acres of land that is new to us, where I live apprenticed with my partner in marriage. We have three teenage children who are expanding rapidly into their worlds. The challenges of this year include working with the land to increase its edible bounty and growing out my outer work in the therapeutic arts.
The last year has been a time of seeds yielding fruit – recently I’ve become certified to deliver the Caring Dads program, a fortuitous fulfillment of a long-term dream. I’ve also started coaching endurance athletes with Arete Endurance, combining two loves in my life – endurance sports and learning/mentoring.
Living on purpose, resting in grace, infused with beauty, acting with integrity, resting in solitude.
These are the themes of the second half of my life as I lean into its gifts, challenges and adventures.
I believe strongly in the goodness and potential of all people. Dogmas and creeds that say otherwise are based in older views of suspicion and guilt. To quote the Dalai Lama:
There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.
I learn from the stories of people around me. I sit in circle with men every week, and have been shaped by this experience. Well over a decade ago I took part in my first wilderness solo in Australia and ever since have returned to this ceremony – for myself and others – to reset and rest deeper into myself and that which is not myself.
Kahlil Gibran writes:
There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.
The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.
And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.
And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.
In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.