Tag: life

Finding Softness in a Hard World

We are constantly bombarded these days with images of violence, conflict, fear, and hatred, whether on the news or in films and TV shows. Varied voices surround us, advocating anger and defiance or peace and compassion—or all simultaneously. Each voice belongs to a human being wearing an identity costume that hides their vulnerability. As individuals and as a people, we are in distress. The world seems on the brink of destruction. Yet in the midst of it all, there are also voices that remind us that this is a transformative transitional time, foretold in ancient cultures. We are not here to perish but to prevail, as spirit, as light.

Sound like a fairy tale? A fabricated distraction that feeds inertia? I don’t think it is. Perhaps belief in a greater purpose to life and living will be what gives us strength and stamina to continue to live love and hope in a world divided into fragmented sectors of adversity and suffering. Birth pains bring new life into being. Thunderstorms and floods are often followed by rainbows and clear air. Not everything is as it appears on the surface. A hard shell covers a soft center.

If we choose soft instead of hard in every situation, we engage the softest part of us, the heart. And the heart, through which the soul is expressed, is also the strongest survival tool we have. The greatest sages through the ages spoke of the wisdom and power of loving-kindness. In the face of life or death, be loving, be kind. Ask, “Can I help you?” One small gesture or word, amplified, can shift the consciousness of a planet. This is why we came here. Not for the easy ride or the simple tasks, but for the challenge of speaking the softest words and offering the gentlest touch in times of fear or trauma.

On any given day, we have that choice, we have that soul responsibility. When the entire world feels harsh and unfeeling, remember the power of your heart and soul and the reason why you (and all of us) were born.

Andrea Gibson: After Life

“I am happiest on the road, when I’m not here or there, but in between, the yellow line running down the center of it all like a sunbeam.”
–Andrea Gibson

I was not familiar with the work of dynamic spoken-word poet Andrea Gibson until after they (preferred nonbinary pronoun) transitioned in July 2025 from ovarian cancer. In November, I happened to see the trailer for a documentary film about Andrea called Come See Me in the Good Light. Next, I stumbled upon a clip of their friend Tig Notaro reading part of Andrea’s poem “Tincture.” Moved to tears, I found the entire poem online and read it through twice, continuing to weep. The kind of tears I had never experienced in quite the same way before: sorrow simultaneous with celebration of life. Andrea’s poetry encompasses both of these in extraordinary ways.

Thus began my hours-long journey across the web, watching every video I could find: Andrea’s poetry performances; Andrea and partner/wife Megan Falley (also a poet) being interviewed; Megan revealing her own feelings after Andrea’s passing; the trailer from the film and the song “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet,” sung by Sarah Bareilles and Brandi Carlile (with Andrea’s words) at the film’s end. Andrea’s website (andreagibson.org) showcases their vividly diverse poetry (lyrical, incisive, humorous, loving). The first poem I heard/saw was “Love Letter from the Afterlife,” written to Megan. I was audibly sobbing by the fourth or fifth line. I’ve listened to it many times since, and it still feels like the most beautifully wise poem ever written. I have been reading poetry all my life but have never run across any quite like hers.

Andrea’s words bridge life, death, and eternity seamlessly, using details recognizable from my own life, from everyone’s life. It all flowed together perfectly as I listened, crying at the heart-wrenching pathos and absolute splendor of life on Earth. Sadness and joy as one inseparable experience. At the end of the afternoon, I felt as if everyone I had ever known had died and come back to life. All at the same time. Everything inside me and outside me as One. That may not make logical sense, but that’s the best way I can describe the experience. Even my tears held the precious poignancy of all life in them.

And then there’s the film. After hearing/seeing all these pieces of Andrea’s life and work, I watched Come See Me in the Good Light, where it all comes together in an extraordinarily honest, funny, and beautiful telling of their (and Meg’s) journey with cancer. Once again, loss of life and love of life are presented as one experience in a way that is both heart-breaking and heart-opening. They share what they went through (for several years) with such vulnerability, humor, and loving sweetness. I laughed, I cried, I felt what they felt right along with them.

 Andrea’s description of coming to inner acceptance and neutrality about so much that had previously “mattered” struck a chord in my own life (I lived through breast cancer a few years ago). They felt parts of their “identity” fall away as they settled into soul awareness. Nothing was as important as the present moment, fully lived and appreciated. I still hear Andrea’s deeply expressive, musical voice at their last poetry performance in Denver in 2024 (shown in the film), the entire theater as one, cheering, laughing, crying, immersed in love.

I believe Andrea Gibson came to Earth to erase the dividing line between life and death. Between all dichotomies, actually. A perfectly nonbinary life and afterlife. Woven into the tapestry of the universe with precisely orchestrated timing for humanity’s deeper awakening. Thank you, Andrea, for your love letter to us all.

“Love Letter from the Afterlife”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmZHLvq-gDg

“Acceptance Speech After Setting the World Record in Goosebumps”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XK-hb_bjqU 

Trailer from Come See Me in the Good Light: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0B8sjxR7Mo

Rose of Sharon art above by Anne Katzeff

The Wisdom of Slow

There is a profound blessing in aging: the pause for reflection. As I grow older, I find that I think more slowly, thoughts moving through at their own pace, unfolding, flowering. I often walk that way too, step by step, holding the awareness that I may never pass this way again: this moment, this experience, this perspective. I remind myself not to miss the subtleties, the hidden beauty, the wonder. Truthfully, it feels to me like the wisdom of a lifetime.

There is a great push to rush through life in the 21st century, as if we were running a race or trying to escape a predator. Many of us feel that pressure—violence and hatred at our doors, poverty and loss not far behind. Everything, particularly in the current political climate, has become a game of survival. Every film, TV show, and news story focuses on outrunning an enemy, surviving an apocalyptic situation. Death always threatening. Yet, life on Earth is so much more than this, if we pause and remember.

Sunrise and sunset each day. Seasonal changes. The love of family and friends. Since the beginning of time, these have always been present, just as there have always been fears and uncertainties. We came here to experience it all. This century may be particularly challenging, but this is the soulwork we signed up for. To remain calm and peaceful in the midst of chaos; loving and kind in the midst of conflict. Humans are evolving, slowly, often imperceptibly, but if we remember the long view we can take a slow deep breath and continue.

I keep coming back to slowness. It seems the key to so much. If you and I rush, we lose one another in the process. We forget who we are at the soul level and why we are here ultimately. When I listen to my friends, slowly and carefully, I really hear the voice of their inner being, what they want to express, to me and to the world. If I speak without rushing my thoughts, I express my heart’s essence. Together, we share our common humanity. When I walk slowly through a park or sanctuary, I fully experience all of Nature with each step and each breath. I hear birdsong and see every season’s flowering. This is the wonder of being alive, no matter what else is going on in the world.

As the days and years pass, I feel all of this more acutely. Yes, my soul is eternal, but this particular lifetime is unique, a gift not to be wasted or hurried through to an imaginary finish line. Every single moment holds within it a drop of infinity, the spirit of all that is, which I can only receive if I slow down and breathe it in with gratitude and appreciation. It is then that time falls away, and my soul and my humanity are One.

A Timeless Morning

We can find many entry points to Presence in the course of our lives. Presence: the experience of oneness with all things; timeless awareness; Spirit. It could arise unexpectedly in the midst of crisis or celebration, sound or silence, solitude or community. We each cross the threshold to Presence in our own way, in our own time. Yet, we all reach it at some point, and if we are fortunate, our hearts open wide enough to live there permanently.

For me, Nature is the eternal gateway to Presence in my life. In small glimpses or panoramic views. Green trees and blue skies outside my window. Distant snow-covered mountains seen from an airplane. Or, walking in a nature sanctuary as the seasons change throughout the year. I have often written about Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, which is my bird’s eye view to the natural world. And I mean that literally: the birds are always part of my walks there. But then, honestly, so is everything else: flowers, trees, ponds, hills, dells, butterfly gardens and native plantings. To me, it’s paradise on Earth. It renews my spirit and feeds my soul.

One morning this past August, I walked through Mt. Auburn’s gates and was immediately immersed in Presence. I could feel a powerful vibrancy of life everywhere I looked. The late summer flowers (hydrangea, Angelica gigas, Joe Pye weed, phlox, black-eyed susan) blooming in the Asa Gray Garden were stunning, and they were surrounded by dozens of bees dancing through the air, flying from one to another, collecting pollen. Tiger swallowtail and monarch butterflies floated by as well, as did dragonflies. I stood mesmerized by the beauty, the sun making everything around me sparkle with light.

As I walked farther, I heard familiar bird calls in the trees and bushes: catbird, white-breasted nuthatch, downy woodpecker, flicker, robin, cardinal. Bright yellow-and-black goldfinches were fleetingly visible, calling and swooping by like an avian Cirque du Soleil. The chirping and buzzing of crickets and locusts was also part of this symphony of natural sounds, as was the occasional scolding of a squirrel or chipmunk. At one point, I stopped and stood silently listening, eyes closed. When I did so, I realized that for more than an hour, I had been completely One with all I heard and saw, no separation; my mind had stepped aside entirely. Time was absent. It was a glorious feeling of sacred connection and complete alignment with the world around me and within me. Presence. Tears of gratitude and joy filled my eyes.

I have had similar moments before in Nature, but this particular expanse of timeless Presence seemed especially all-encompassing and beyond the realm of language. The closest I can come is to say that my individual “I” had disappeared into the eternal “I Am,” the center of all being in the cosmos. I was one with the music of the spheres as it played out everywhere around me. Later, I realized that from the soul’s view, this is what is occurring all the time for every one of us. 

Walk Through the Doorway

When I’ve experienced any kind of physical pain or emotional unease in my life, something in me often clinched and shut down as I tried to control it, make it disappear. But what if acceptance and letting go of control is the only way to the other side? Maybe all we’ve been taught about physicality and the human form is upside-down. What if hanging on tightly to how we think it’s supposed to be is opposed to allowing life to unfold? And what if acceptance is the doorway to surrender, and surrender the doorway to feeling less pain as I become aware of my soul’s design?

My inner spirit, or soul, knows my life’s design better than my “I” identity, constructed over the years for survival. Ultimately life is not about surviving; it’s about letting go into something greater than your physical form and individual life. Before you are born and after you die, you know this. In between, your soul guides you to deeper and deeper awareness about the nature of life and your journey within your lifetime, and beyond. Everything that happens is part of your soul design. Nothing is wrong and needs to be erased or eradicated. When I fully accept this, surrendering to it without attachment to any particular outcome, I consciously become part of a flow. Life carries me instead of my trying to force it in a certain direction.

Gradually, in letting go, I relax and allow myself to be one with my soul, accepting what seems hard as part of life, part of oneness. This shift occurs when I see difficulty as a doorway and not prison bars. As long as I try to control (and stop) it, it tightens and hangs on. When I surrender to it as my soul’s path in this lifetime, a subtle shift occurs at the heart level. My experience of it is lighter, easier, and I can sometimes feel the presence of a loving beingness beyond and also encompassing my body. 

A few years ago, I lived through a diagnosis of and treatment for breast cancer. Emotional and physical pain arose, but when I allowed myself to cry and feel the fear, it began to release. I came to realize that this was part of my soul’s journey and I was being given a gift of profound connection to Spirit. That perspective helped me through the whole process, not without occasional discomfort, but with trust, inner peace, and tremendous gratitude for a growing awareness of myself as eternal spirit in a temporary human form. Acceptance had been the doorway to experiencing this.

My soul’s journey continues, and each day I am learning more and more to welcome whatever arises as part of my life’s design. I remind myself that everything is Spirit, and infinite wisdom may be hidden in the smallest details. My heart’s doorway opens wider all the time…until accepting becomes so deep that eventually every door falls away and there is only unbroken peaceful Presence.