Yesterday Jill and I got together and did this giving thing in tandem. We made a welcome home sign for one of our friends, Hannah, whose sister just had a baby. It was a scary situation when the baby was born and she had to be in the NICU for a few days. So Hannah went to be there and support her family. It felt good to make her a little something. Not the most challenging giving experience, but nonetheless, I think it will be appreciated.

We also rounded up some warm clothes and food and dropped them off at the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless. I had never been there before. I would like to go back and give more. I have so much stuff that I don’t ever use, and it’s nice to give things to people who really need them — especially warm things when it’s so cold out.

Jill and I also did some good talking about this here project that we’ve embarked on. It’s been unexpectedly meaningful. Okay, I’m getting kind of teary. I didn’t sleep much… but still. It’s like we’re entering into this whole stream of of giving and receiving which is really the full experience of life. It is not about the fact that we’re giving, but that by giving we’re accepting and opening up to the joy and pain of life… partaking in life, saying yes to the whole shebang. And it’s actually kind of painful.

If you’ve ever heard of or done tonglen practice (Jill has mentioned it a couple times), well it’s kind of like that. You accept the suffering of others into your heart and offer them your joy/contentment. It’s an energetic exchange as opposed to a physical one, but somehow it feels very much the same. Often I don’t want to do tonglen because it’s hard work to exercise my heart in that way, and it’s kind of inconvenient to feel so much. Same thing here.

And then I just start feeling so much about EVERTHING. Yesterday Noel, Zoe and I went out to brunch. It was snowing outside and warm inside and just quite a lovely, quiet atmosphere. There was an old couple in the booth next to us who kept looking over at Zoe and watching her. It was poignant to feel this old couple there watching us young people, doing what they probably did forty years earlier. The passing of life and time was right there for all of us to feel. I wanted to reach out and say hello, but I didn’t, and I felt regretful about that afterwords.