The Berry Thief:  Painted by Esther Morrison Smith for this year’s 30 Day Art Challenge.   I only got to meet Esther through her work.  This painting expressed the bitter cold of that evening and the way all creatures have to adapt to survive.  It also conveys resilience and sharp wittedness.  This bird is awake.    I doubt this bird is spending much time thinking about what it will do next or what it did yesterday.  Survival depends on being here now.

I’ve been thinking about how to enliven my own animal sensibilities:   tracking sensation, tuning into environment, seeing, hearing, feeling people.

I have the privilege of contacting lots of people through touching and teaching.   Contact can be magical when it is fresh, immediate, open to possibility.  The possibility of sharing a co-arising experience is pretty cool.  You influence what you perceive and that which you perceive influences you.

On Sunday, I invited people to relax in a yoga class – to close their eyes and let go.  They didn’t need permission.  They weren’t compelled to follow along.  We co-created the place where vulnerability could just arise. They gifted me the vision of a room full of beating hearts and breathing lungs.  There was a sense of resonance, a stillness within subtle movement and a quiet inside sound.

Perhaps this is a bit of what painting may be like.  Esther doesn’t just look at the bird.  She really sees the bird in its birdness – inseparable from all that arises in its coming to be.  It occupies a spacious landscape that can feel empty but is so rich with experience.  Just like seeing beating hearts, Esther gifts me the bird vision.

Isn’t it miraculous that we can trust each other?  We can realize humanness – unadorned – just as it is.  I’m more than o.k. with that.

Oh, I’m so glad to be here, alive today.