The path turns in a new direction...

When I was at Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado recently for a "learn to meditate" retreat, I had a chance to visit the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, an amazing 3-story sacred structure. I got to do a walking meditation around the outside, and a sitting meditation inside, at the feet of a 30-foot golden Buddha statue. I even sang a bit of an old Shaker hymn in the echoey space when no one else was around. In the marble floor of the Stupa were mosaics of all sorts - lotus blossoms, wheels, and a pomegranate. In the pomegranate were loose red marbles. One of our meditation instructors, Valentino, invited me to take a marble home with me, a symbolic pomegranate seed to represent the beginning of this new path of mindfulness meditation. I loved that.

This blog is intended as a journal of my travels, though it isn't really a new path. I've meditated off and on for 30 years, trying different methods, coming to it for different reasons, and approaching from a dizzying range of emotional, spiritual and even physical places, depending on my age and circumstances.

It's also a journal of the inner life in general, the spiritual wanderings about which Midwestern stoic and pragmatic prairie folk rarely talk.

So I'm planting this pomegranate seed deep in my heart, feeling it  take root, and on I go...