mundane practices of return

watching spring slide into summer

Part of the reason I write this is to have a place of return. I feel like I probably mention this most weeks. At this moment of my life , this time where I am a lot of different people each day, I find the practices of return or maybe it is belonging so important. They aren’t very flashy, in fact most of them are so mundane they are easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention. Also they are so intimate, more on this another time. I think intimacy with the world and ourselves is done with practice.

So this practice of return, to writing, to imagining you, to observing and reflecting, it does a lot of things. Each time I sit down to write, I write to you. I think about your faces, the ways we have spent time together, who of you I might get to see soon. I think about the meals we’ve eaten together, the last time we jumped in cold water. I think about your faces changing over the time I’ve known you. I conjur you into aliveness again and again.

This reminds me to look out the window and notice all the other ways I belong with what is right here. I watch the bats wiggle their way across the sky hungry and eager. I watch the rhubarb return to a prehistoric era through its wild flowers. I anticipate what is next, I remember. I smell. And it lets me belong, even on the days, weeks, and months where life feels like a greasy smear of too many illnesses, tasks, and worries.

And I do this thing because for me it is an act of care, and I know this will be different for each of you. I do it because when I care I get to be in the liminal where things are always changing. Where spring cascades into summer, and I am here with each lilac bloom.

And soon there will more to share with you about inviting you into this with me! But for now, I’d love to hear from some of you about what your practices of return are.