It’s interesting to watch and listen to people react to the varieties of benign insects that emerge this time of year here in the Great Lakes region. There appears to be a new species of people who have become insulated enough inside to have a very low wing-mobile bug tolerance.

It is an issue of sharing one’s skin with transient intersectors, a tactile reminder of our oneness with nature, how our body is not “ours”, but an intrinsic and inseparable expression of heaven and earth. It’s an undeniable reminder that our body is a field of trillions of living beings who daily commune as the being that bears our name.

The inclusive, collaborative choices of and trump the exclusive, competitive choices of or. All violence begins with the lens of or that comes with its own body of justifications. Peace begins with the lens of and.

The timidity of or fears the courage of and. The world of and makes no sense in the world of or because and cannot be predicted or controlled. And, because it has the scope of consciousness, embraces difference and change.

Most people do not care about others. Caring is not about us, our needs, our success. It is about the other. And in authentic care, there is no confusion, only clarity.

Love is one of those human experiences that gets redefined along life’s path, whether we embrace or resist redefinition.

Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck in “Nothing Special” offers one of the simplest and provocative definitions of love, as awareness.

It’s interesting doing training this morning with weekend 3rd shift hospital staff in trust building with patients and families. Their enthusiasm and engagement was identical to week day day-shift folks, in spite of working without the luxury of support that occurs on weekday days. It’s a statement about how commitment trumps an ideal environment of resources.

We know everything we need to live in a balanced way. We know how to breathe, pay attention, stretch, eat healthy, visualize success, and so on.

Being out of balance is a simple matter of forgetting what we know.

Being in balance is a simple matter of remembering what we know.

Friends have been podcasting local leaders who hold countless stories of how our community has evolved and changed over the years. Their stories are stories of empowerment, not excuses, that inspire this generation’s capacity for courage. This is an incredibly important piece of work.

Communities thrive when they thrive on diverse passions. This means being very OK with people having different passions than we do. Where would any community be today if people only had the passions we do? Let’s be grateful for the many many people who diverge from our passions with passions that enrich the community several hundredfold.

At the end of our Monday night SouthCoast Meditation Group’s sessions, we have a dharma (open space) dialogue on any aspect of practice that occurs to people for comment and conversation. Last night, most of the time was conversation of silence.

It was a good reminder of the very rich role silence plays in conversations. Silence is authentic invitation - forcing nothing, allowing anything. The emptiness that is the ground of form.

The Buddha once commented that good friendship is vital to the path of enlightenment.