Greetings from my desk in my living room, where the fall colors outside my window are golden, brown and light yellow. Not yet a muted scene of skeleton trees, but well on their way. Trees letting their color go and beginning to make secret their aliveness. Their fallen leaves then decay and enrich the soil life grows from. All in service to making the cycle of vitality possible. Letting go, dying, becoming alive, living…
the distinctions can blur. So…how are you with that? I say “aliveness” often when I talk about SE+AM. And when I say it, it doesn’t exclude those no longer living. When I ask myself to make contact with my own aliveness, it is not separate from every body that came before and are part of the ingredients of my now living body. When I ask people in my workshops to witness the “aliveness” in the person they are witnessing, I am inviting them to behold the scope and depth of time that has brought that person into the bodily form in front of them.For me, aliveness is not static and it is not always tangible.
It is movement and it can be more or less present depending on the moment. Leaves fall. And when we catch a glimpse of that motion, however small, it is precious. So precious. And when we can’t sense it, at some level, our bodies grieve it’s absence.If you have had the honor of bearing witness to the transition of a “living” body to a “no longer living” body, you understand that the transformation of alive to dead is not an on/off switch. There isn’t some clear line that makes that change. And undoubtedly something very tangible changes.
One could argue that we are all transitioning towards more or less aliveness constantly. So, I ask you, can you locate your own living? Can you also feel the aliveness outside and around you? And can you turn your life towards it, in whatever form it takes?I am well aware of the charge in the words “living” and “dead” in these times of incomprehensible suffering. And aware of the complexity each of us has in holding them, reading them and crying them out. May we continue to orient our lives around the love that binds them together.