This daffodil is doing such an amazing job of expressing itself. It genuinely touches my heart to see how fully this flower has blossomed into its ambition, and its purpose - the full circumference of its possibility.

I take almost daily walks in the park by my apartment and so I’m attentive to the changes brought on by the promise of the season. First the crocuses and the daffodils, then the snowbells and the tulips. The grass begins to venture up and all this sets the stage for the drama of the cherry blossoms and finally the magnolia.

It’s not just the synesthetic beauty of flowers but the logic that they evidence. Plant a seed and something will bloom. Call out and in time - there will emerge an entire season of response. My life feels this way now.

I’ve made a decision to switch into a Masters of Religion from the Masters of Divinity program. The M.Div requires students work an additional 12-15 hours a week at a field site on top of their courseload and I just can’t do that as a working student already. Sadly, after a semester of trying to find a solution, I have accepted that a change of major is the wisest way forward. Still, I think it may be a blessing in disguise. It wouldn’t be the first time I found one hidden in a difficult circumstance.

25 years ago, I remember riding a city bus to stay out of the rain. I was homeless and had no other place to go and remember how tired I felt in my body. I looked down and to the seat on the right to find a paperback of Alan Watts’ This Is It laying beside me. I was 19. I had read the Bible and Quran by then but I’d not knowingly been exposed to any text drawing on Buddhist ideas before. This small doorway into Zen articulations of the observer and the observed being inextricably intertwined were gentle seeds blown over the surface of the earth.

Two years later, while many 21 year olds would be thrilled to have a night out at the bar, I scraped together enough cash to attend a weekend of teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The monastics came with their horns and sand painting practices and as an artist even then I was deeply moved. I took the refuges (finding refuge in the triple gem - the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha) in a colosseum with thousands of others that weekend. I didn’t know all of what it meant at the time, but the power behind H.H. The Dalai Lama’s presence was undeniable as was the outflow of love from the local Tibetan Community who was there to welcome him and the monastics with him.

Six years later I would find myself struggling to recover from a devastating car accident. I could not walk without incredible pain and at the recommendation of an Iyengar yoga teacher, I found myself at a meditation retreat at Deer Park Monastery. Incredibly, it was there that I met Thích Nhất Hạnh in person. When I think about this now, I am amazed. I barely knew who he was at the time, but what struck me was his radiant kindness. He could see immediately how much pain I was in and taught me walking meditation in such a way where I learned to find spaciousness within the pain I was living with. He taught me how to walk again, one breath at a time. I learned the touching the earth meditation from him as well - the ability to do this at all was an enormous accomplishment for me at the time in my injured state. I had the earth to thank for the strength to continue to heal. At the conclusion of my time there, I was invited as a lay person to take the Five Mindfulness Trainings (which have their root in the Five Precepts) and I received my dharma name.

It was this same year that I would fall in with the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, CA and become introduced to meditation in the Theravada school through teachers there and at retreats at Spirit Rock. There are so many other moments where the dharma crossed my path through one incredible Tina Turner concert and later meetings with bell hooks, Alice Walker, Angela Davis and so on. I’m deeply grateful. All of this is to say that my decision to shift into a Masters of Religion allows me to focus more intensely on Buddhist texts and to read these alongside sacred texts of other traditions as well. One thing I was not prepared for in the M.Div program was the degree to which I realize I am already making my work manifest in the world. There are things I am able to do as an artist that my peers feel they need a degree and special institutional permission to do. I can shift my focus now to asking - How can Buddhist concepts support and expand my creative frameworks when thinking about the interrelated nature of things?

Wish me luck as I finish up my finals in these next couple weeks. I’ll have more to share about summer projects soon. In the meantime, New York is beautiful in the spring - a perfect place to weave new worlds indeed.

.