Uradiance

  Don't tell me about the end of the world. Tell me about the beginning of the world. A thousand colors of aurora wound in a raindrop, your rainbow wings in a tear. Next Summer's light on a brittle twig, wrapped in a gray cocoon. Fur self-healing in a mossy burrow. The blue egg waiting in a mother-swirl of sticks, She the shaper of galaxies. Don't tell me how it ends. Tell me how it begins. How this breath is given, because you surrendered that one. Print by Amy Haderer

  Q: My yoga teacher told me not to meditate with pets because they steal your spiritual energy. But whenever I start meditating, my pets sense it and scratch at the door to get in. What should I do? A: In the age of ignorance, many monks were jealous of cows, and of the jewelry bestowed on royal elephants. So they invented such nonsense. Now we know that animals are holier than angels, and it is auspicious to meditate with them. Don't the gods have pets? The Spirit descends on Jesus in the form of a Dove. Durgha rides a lion. Shiva meditates with a tame serpent around his neck. Krishna leans on a moonlit calf to play his sacred flute. Without their pets, the gods would become arrogant. So would we. Fur is sacred. Fur transmits divine energy from the earth, up through your finger, out through your crown, and into the heavens, where angels can feel it. Angels long for fur and that is why they take birth here as golden poodles, white mutts, and black labs. Even...

My teacher is a blossoming weed. My teacher is a withered thistle dispersed by the breeze on ten thousand threads. My teacher is the motionless explosion of a rose. The Beloved in whose moon-gaze I swoon at midnight, only to feel bereft in the dim light of dawn? No, my teacher is humbler, kinder than that, more inward to me than I. My teacher walks through the meadow of my flesh, scattering seeds in my furrows, nostrils, belly, the shadow between my toes. His seeds are syllables of silence that root down in my empty places. Their rhythm reminds my heart how we surged as a single whisper before the stars were born. The sign of his presence is falling upward and a warmth in my marrow. My teacher is a golden breath of Grace who sweeps away the Should. Photo of my teacher by Scott Hague