Born Again

Every morning you are born again, the sunrise a birthright to your awakening, unsought deliverance from the womb of the night, pain the inheritance of your becoming, the new day a doula inviting you to join the great mystery everyone knows yet few choose. There are no programs, no tried and true techniques for engaging this day guaranteeing you safe passage. You must meet the day raw, as it is, if there is to be any hope of honest engagement, real immersion, and true conversation with your fellow sojourners. When you begin a conversation, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential, you immediately catch a glimpse of an entirely other universe, and, likewise, disclose something of your own, a gleaning revealed beyond any control or contrivance you might formulate to conceal the design of your own dwelling. Quite astonishingly, through your discourse with another, a unique creation is born, a new, third element previously hidden, now revealed, an intercourse giving birth to a shared world of blessing and delight or, at other times, damnation and blight. Heaven and hell are aspects of lived relationships, the evolution of an inter-constellation born of nothing more than words, intention, and presence.

Gratitude cannot be forced. When waking, if you prod yourself to produce something still incubating, you will only find a phantasm, a poor shadow and substitute for what you actually seek. Gratitude comes quite naturally through those disciplines you forsake the most: vulnerability, looking, listening intently to the world of others and the world around you. No matter how tired you become, no matter the number of your missteps and mistakes, the miracle of rebirth is the miracle of the new day, the dawn of opportunity, grace to begin again, a bit of glory in the gray.