So some international friends came together today to pray and share over the internet from different parts of the world (no pictures – not sure if everybody is happy to have their pic taken and shared). I decorated a shirt for myself for the occasion as I thought about meditative presence- being with people and honoring the quietude and beauty of just taking others in and listening in a caring way. For the shirt- I used bleach on a black T-shirt. I painted the words “Don’t just do something, sit there.” This wasn’t a phrase I came up with – I heard it on the incomparable Shrinkrap Radio podcast, episode 760.

We were off to a clumsy start because (as I often do for some reason) I got the time wrong, and being that I was the technology host- I was unprepared to start and people couldn’t even get in at first. But – as Bob Ross says- we don’t make mistakes, we have happy accidents. We are flawed and that is beautiful. You know why adobe structures are more beautiful than engineered ones? Maybe part of it is – there are irregularities and bumps and crevasses and such – shadows of a flawed (if we must call them flawed) surface. This is why we love them. I can say I admire my friends and family for their virtues and capabilities – but honestly – crazy as it may seem, I “love them” so much in their vulnerability, their imperfections, their weaknesses and even (especially) in their ‘cringe’ moments. Because that’s the place where we hold and support and carry and “know” each other in a compassionate kind of state. Right? We don’t really like to share our flaws with people who don’t love us or who we don’t trust – isn’t that so? And those we are close to- we can’t hide these from them can we? There it is – the ‘happy accidents’ Bob Ross speaks of.

Anyway – not sure what this post is about – but I just want to record how much I LOVED to see the friends who came together today – a few of whom I hadn’t met before and how much some others are in my heart and who I hope to hear from again soon.

For the record, here is a link to the flier we created: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fMaB4UTSNXGf7OblbZnhJN4WbWWRcWGH/view?usp=sharing