The Bay That Birthed Me

I was born on Biscayne Bay. At Mount Sinai Medical Center on Miami Beach. A place not just next to the Bay, but built directly out of her.

Miami Beach is not naturally formed land. The original island was little more than a thin, low-lying sandbar, a narrow strip of dunes facing the Atlantic, a labyrinth of mangrove swamps and tidal creeks spilling into Biscayne Bay. Shifting sands. Shallow waters. Breathing wetlands, alive with change.

In the early 1900s, that change, changed. Developers dredged massive amounts of sand, rock, and silt from the bottom of Biscayne Bay. They used it to fill the swamps, raise the ground, and push the land outward into her shallow waters. Much of what we now know as Miami Beach was built this way, in those decades. The Bay’s living floor, made into dry land by human hands and human ambition.

Mount Sinai Medical Center stands on this reclaimed ground. Land that once belonged solely to the Bay’s tidal heart. Land built from her sediment.

This makes me, in every sense, a child of Biscayne Bay. Born on her bones, on land birthed when her tides were pushed back and her wetlands buried under sand.

The Living Bay

"Place shapes memory, and memory in turn shapes imagination and the ability to dream."
— John O'Donohue

Most who live here now know little of Biscayne Bay’s history, let alone the place she holds in all of our lives, imaginations, and dreams. She is a shallow subtropical lagoon, much larger than most realize. She stretches 35 miles along Florida’s southeastern coast, from her northern shallows just north of Miami down past the mangrove islands and clear waters of the upper Florida Keys.

Fed by the freshwater of the Everglades and the salty tides of the Atlantic, she is an estuary teeming with hidden and visible life, a vibrant nursery for mangroves, seagrass beds, manatees, sea turtles, fish, and countless migrating birds. Long before modern Miami, the Tequesta people fished her waters, navigated her mangrove forests, and lived in rhythm with her tides.

Biscayne Bay is the space where the Everglades, the mangrove coast, the coral reefs, and the Atlantic Ocean meet. She is a vital conduit, holding the delicate balance of water, life, and breath. Her vitality ripples outward. Strengthening the Everglades. The mangrove coast. The coral reefs. The life of each of us who call this place home.

Biscayne Bay shaped me long before I understood any of this. Before I knew what an estuary was, before I knew anything about sea level rise or porous limestone or the ancient movement of water beneath my feet.

I simply knew the Bay.

Biscayne Bay Rising

The first of this year’s king tides have begun to arrive in South Florida.

Over the coming months, Biscayne Bay will rise higher than she ordinarily does, spilling across seawalls, bubbling up through storm drains, gathering in streets and low-lying places. The highest tides will come this fall.

King tides are the highest predicted high tides of the year. Technically, they are perigean spring tides, caused when the gravitational alignment of the moon, sun, and Earth pulls the ocean a little higher. Here in South Florida, the highest tides generally arrive in the fall, when warmer waters and seasonal winds raise sea levels further still. Add heavy rain, strong winds, or waves, and the flooding gets considerably worse.

Each year, I watch her rise a little further into the world that we have created.

But a king tide doesn’t require a storm. Sometimes the sky is perfectly blue.

The waters simply rise.

Living in Miami, we’ve grown increasingly familiar with this no-longer-strange occurrence. Salt water appears in the streets. Canals rise against seawalls. Water pushes upward through drains. For a time, the line between city and Bay grows uncertain.

As sea level rises, these tides are reaching farther inland, occurring more frequently, and lingering longer.

I find something both unsettling and strangely beautiful in this. There is something ancient happening beneath all our concrete and glass, something entirely indifferent to the boundaries we’ve drawn. Earth, moon, sun, ocean, gravity. The Bay rises and falls as she has for thousands of years.

Only now she is rising a little higher.

When Biscayne Bay rises into our streets, we understandably experience it as a problem. And it is one. Homes, roads, drinking water, sewage systems, businesses, entire neighborhoods are increasingly vulnerable to a rising sea. We need pumps, better drainage, restored wetlands, stronger infrastructure, thoughtful development, and ways of adapting to a future that is already arriving.

But when I watch the king tide rise, I experience something else as well.

A reminder.

Beneath the pavement, beneath the manicured lawns, beneath the ever-taller towers, the old watery landscape remains. The Bay is still here.

The Bay remembers. And so do I.

Two Waters Meeting

To understand what’s happening to Biscayne Bay, we have to look in the other direction too, away from the Atlantic, toward the Everglades.

My beloved Biscayne Bay lives between two great waters. From the east comes the salt water of the Atlantic, entering and leaving with the tides. From the west, historically, came the slow movement of fresh water through the Everglades, across wetlands and through the porous limestone beneath our feet.

Where those waters met, something extraordinary was born.

Biscayne Bay is not simply an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean. She is an estuary, a place continually shaped by the meeting of fresh and salt water. Freshwater arriving from the Everglades lowered the salinity along the western shoreline and nourished mangroves, seagrasses, fish, birds, manatees, sea turtles, and the astonishing abundance of life that made the Bay home.

Water moved slowly then. It spread across the landscape rather than rushing through canals. Wetlands held it during the rainy season and released it gradually.

There was no clear boundary where the Everglades ended and Biscayne Bay began. One living landscape simply became another.

Then we changed the movement of the water.

We dredged canals and drained wetlands. We filled shallows and mangrove shorelines to create land. We built roads, neighborhoods, hotels, seawalls, and towers. We engineered an enormous system to move rainwater away from where we wanted to live and toward the sea as quickly as possible.

For a time, it seemed to work. What we couldn’t see, or chose not to see, was that we were disrupting the natural movement of water that had sustained South Florida for thousands of years. It was a short-term solution.

Now the water is reminding us what those choices set in motion.

The slow, broad movement of freshwater toward Biscayne Bay was interrupted. Water that once seeped through wetlands began arriving through canals in concentrated pulses, too little at times, and at other times too much, discharged all at once. And the water arriving from our developed landscape increasingly carried nutrients and pollutants from the world we’d built upstream.

The delicate conversation between fresh and salt water was changed. Seagrasses died. Algae bloomed. Habitats shifted. The living edge between Everglades and ocean grew harder to sustain.

Now there is another movement of salt water, this one from the east. Rising seas are pushing salt water farther inland, not only across the surface during king tides, but beneath our feet, through the porous limestone and toward the freshwater Biscayne Aquifer we depend on for drinking water.

Water Lessons

We are beginning, however imperfectly, to understand what we’ve done.

South of the city, an enormous restoration effort has been underway to reconnect some of these ancient relationships. The Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetlands Project, part of the larger Everglades restoration, was completed in 2025. Its purpose is simple to describe, if enormously complicated to accomplish. It is meant to restore some of the natural movement of freshwater toward southern Biscayne Bay.

Instead of sending freshwater directly through canals and out into the Bay, the project routes it through coastal wetlands, rehydrating them and letting the landscape behave something like a sponge again. Receiving water. Holding it. Releasing it gradually.

We cannot recreate the South Florida that existed before Miami. Nor should we pretend we can. Millions of us live here now. But perhaps we can learn to live differently with the water.

Miami Beach, the place of my birth, is having to do that. The city has spent years installing pumps, improving stormwater systems, and raising or protecting vulnerable infrastructure. In 2025 it adopted a Sea Level Rise Adaptation Plan looking roughly seventy-five years into the future. Across Miami-Dade, roads are being raised, pump stations installed, buildings protected, and strategies developed to slow saltwater intrusion into the freshwater aquifer.

Unfortunately, most of this work, is defensive. It responds to water that has already arrived, or soon will, holding a line rather than changing the relationship. That kind of response is necessary. Homes and lives depend on it.

But there is a second, quieter, more fundamental kind of solution taking shape alongside the first. One less concerned with holding water back than with letting the land receive it again. Restoring wetlands. Creating places where rain can soak into the earth. Using living shorelines where possible. Reconsidering the assumption that every encounter between water and the city must end with the water being pumped away.

Where the first approach reacts, the second regenerates. It is slower, harder to fund, and easy to overlook next to a new pump station.

It deserves much more of our attention and resources than it gets.

Restoration must begin not with the fantasy of controlling nature, but with remembering the relationships that made this place possible in the first place.

Everglades and Bay. Fresh water and salt water. Wetland and ocean. Rain and tide. Human beings and the living landscape upon which we’ve built our lives.

Borrowed Ground

I hold few things with anything approaching certainty. But I feel some certainty about this. Biscayne Bay remembers her place in time. Each high tide, each storm surge, each breath of salt wind reminds me, and should remind all of us, that the land of my birth city was not conquered from Biscayne Bay.

Only borrowed.

Biscayne Bay, like all of nature, is patient, not passive. She will return. She is returning.

The Long Arc of Belonging

Nonetheless, this is where I belong. Belonging follows a long arc, shaped by memory, return, and the quiet surrender to something greater than ourselves.

So I return to her, on her northern reach, morning after morning. I come to her shoreline, sometimes full of thought, always full of reverence. I bow. I sit. I watch her breathe. I am awed by her primordial song. Water meeting shore. Water meeting shore. Water meeting shore.

Most mornings, I wonder if I have any right to intrude on her holy rituals. I know I am a trespasser in a ceremony that perhaps was never meant for human eyes.

Yet, time after time, she invites me in, not as a stranger, not as a guest, but as her child. Biscayne Bay birthed me. She taught me stillness. She taught me the slow, patient rhythm of surrender and renewal. She taught me how to belong.

I

Right now I write words to an imaginary someone about holiness and love. Many years ago, when I was young, I worried about words. Words I wrote. Words I said. Words I thought. Words you said. Words you thought. Too few words, and I was lonely. Too many words, and I was lost. Now, in the postmortem of my youth, in the shadowy dark of the shady side of the mountain, in the nowness of ripened silence and sweet stillness, the words disappear, or perhaps they rearrange themselves into tenderness, or curiosity, or bewilderment, or a knowing gnawing at the heart, or a kaleidoscopic clarity. Do not give any of this a word. All right, give it a word. Call it holy. Holy as in a fly trapped in an illuminated spider web under the quarter moon. Holy as we are all in this remembering together. Holy as when it rains, each of us gets wet. Then there is the issue of the Word of God. Not really a word at all. And by really I mean reality. And by reality I mean wordless. And by wordless I mean a breath, a vibration on the other side of suffering. I mean human hearts suckling on human hearts. I mean the universe giving birth to herself through us. I mean love.

II

This moment, I am imagining myself as love. Each beat of my heart, my every breath, nothing but love. Being love this moment, I say this to the trees, and the ocean, and the earth beneath my feet: forgive me. When I fully realize I am love, imagining this moment, how extraordinary I imagine this moment to be. In love, I place limitless love at the feet of my beloved, knowing now every being I meet is my beloved. No matter how many times I say, I love you, there is always more love, so I say, I love you.

III

The divine mystery births through our human form. When we deny the mystery, we feel separate and suffer. Embracing the mystery, we remember we are love.

George and I met in 1991 when I was the dean and primary instructor at an acupuncture college and George was, by his own description, the worst student I ever had. But George’s sui generis essence, healing presence and vast gifts transcended the classroom and we went on to form a profound and enduring bond as mentor and apprentice, colleagues, companions on the Way and finally deep, deep, deep “soul friends” or Anam Cara.

These reflections are offered in a Shakespearean style as a homage to my soul friend, my anam cara, George Cole, whose life began in Stratford upon Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare, and whose friendship has left an enduring mark upon my heart .This one’s for you my dear George!

Last eve my anam cara did depart this mortal shore, and sitting beneath the waning gibbous moon I felt grief arise from some ancient cavern of the soul, a dark tide gnawing at the marrow of my bones; and lo, though I clutched at the smallness of myself, grief in her fierce mercy did unmake me, for grief is no enemy but a strange holy midwife, stripping the husk from the heart that love may stand revealed.

My anam cara is gone, yet not gone, for what reckoning hath the soul with distance? What commerce hath love with death? George Cole, my anam cara, my friend of the soul, now the one who dwelleth beyond the tyranny of clocks, beyond the illusion of separation, beyond all mortal reckonings of before and after.

Yet strange indeed are the workings of Providence, for when first we met, neither knew the other as anam cara. He deemed me aloof, perchance even pompous, and I beheld a curious mariner, a wanderer upon the seas, a healer clothed in uncommon garments, reclining upon a beach chair in the midst of scholarly instruction, as though some sea spirit had drifted into our classroom upon a favorable wind.

He named himself the poorest of students, yet others gathered round him as pilgrims about a well. They sought not his examinations nor his credentials, but something rarer, some hidden kindness, some natural wisdom, some gift of presence which no school may bestow and no examination may measure.

At the surface we stood as opposites, he a wandering lover of company, festival, laughter, and adventure; I more inclined toward solitude, contemplation, and silence and immediate family. He gathered souls wherever he wandered, seeing treasure in castaway things, beauty in the broken, possibility in what others abandoned. He fashioned abundance from scarcity, wonder from simplicity, homes from unlikely harbors.

Yet curiosity lurked just below the surface. George first drew breath in Stratford upon Avon, far beyond the sea, and wandered many roads and waters of this wide world, whilst I was reared but a few miles from the very place where Providence would one day cause our paths to meet. Yet some secret thread seemed already woven betwixt us, for the vessel he called home lay moored upon my beloved Biscayne Bay. There we first shared tea upon the bay, listening to the ancient conversation of water meeting shore.

Now Fortune, that capricious mistress, did play a curious hand. George, having near exhausted his welcome within the halls of learning, stood upon uncertain ground. The examinations had shown him little favor, and many would have reckoned his course at an end. Yet my anam cara was not fashioned of such timber as readily surrenders. From a noisy public telephone, amidst the din of passing carriages and the rude clamor of construction, he did place a call and humbly inquire whether he might apprentice at my side. The request was improbable, the petitioner no less so. Yet something in that moment moved me to assent. Thereupon began a most unlikely apprenticeship. The struggling student of the school became the exquisite apprentice of the clinic, and for many years we labored side by side. Little did either of us know that beneath the garments of teacher and apprentice, another bond was quietly taking root, awaiting its season to reveal itself.

Thus did the years unfold, and what began as teacher and apprentice ripened into fellowship, and fellowship into friendship, and friendship into that deeper mystery which the Celts called anam cara. For there are many loves beneath the heavens: the love of parent and child, the love of lover and beloved, the love of teacher and student; yet anam cara is of another order altogether, a kinship of souls recognizing one another beneath the disguises of personality, circumstance, and time.

Now grief walks beside me as an ancient queen, blowing away the echoing edges of memory, stripping flesh from bone, leaving only the bright architecture of love; and in that holy emptiness I find not loss but anam cara, not ending but anam cara, not absence but anam cara.

Therefore I give thanks for the years granted unto us, for the laughter, for the questions, for the impish explorations, for the journeys, for the countless ways we shaped one another by our companionship; and if somewhere beyond the veil there be another sea, another horizon, another gathering of wandering souls, I trust my anam cara hath already found his place amongst them. Speaking with strangers as friends, finding beauty in forgotten things, following once more the beckoning line where ocean meeteth shore meeteth sky.

.

My friend, Raja, is getting old.

Yes, he remains ceaselessly curious and still wakes up each day full of enthusiasm, ready to explore and experience whatever the day might offer. He is excited and spontaneous about the details of life. Still loves walks, visits from friends, time in the garden, sunrises and sunsets, mealtime (anyone’s), and especially full moons.

Especially full moons.

He is content and delighted just hanging out with his people, whether human or cat. He forgives instantly. He loves easily and expresses that love wholeheartedly, without reservation or strategy. There is no withholding in him. No keeping score. No waiting to see if it’s safe.

That said, he wakes up a bit gimpy now. He softly moans sometimes in a way he never did before. He takes a moment before standing, chooses his steps more carefully, and pauses to gather himself. And, if possible, he seems more attached to me than ever. He leans in closer. Gets jealous of others more easily. Follows more faithfully. Looks back more often, as if to make sure we are still walking the path together.

Raja is a rescue, so we are not entirely certain of his age. We’ve been together since April 2015, and he was supposedly about a year and a half old when our lives first crossed. That would make him around twelve and a half now, give or take. Old enough to be slowing down. Old enough to be teaching even more wisely.

The Celts spoke of the anam cara, a soul friend. I have often felt that dogs move naturally in this realm. They do not care about our accomplishments, opinions, or identities. They accompany our being. Through changing seasons, joys and losses, health and illness, they remain present. Raja has been such a friend for me.

Walking beside Raja these days, I feel my own aging more clearly. Not as a problem to solve, but as something to listen to. We both wake a little stiffer. We both take a moment before moving fully into the day.

Still, slowing down has become less of a loss and more of a teacher. Daoism reminds us of the Great Teacher: Change. I feel that teacher close now, working gently on both of us. Watching what was dissolve, I am present to what is.

Meanwhile, Raja is my teacher too.

Raja doesn’t resist what his body is doing. He rests when he needs to rest, moves when it’s time to move, and meets each moment as it arrives. In the Daoist view, this is not resignation; it’s alignment. Watching him, I feel my own grip soften. Aging, I’m learning, isn’t a failure of will or vitality. It’s a conscious return to the larger movement that carries birth, growth, decline, and death as a single, continuous flow.

There is a deep gratitude that comes with this. The more I settle into the larger movement, the more precious this life, this moment, becomes. Because things ache, they gather attention, tending and kindness. Because nothing is permanent, everything is gratefully received. Walking slowly with Raja, this no longer feels like philosophy. It feels like lived truth.

What I am learning from Raja is not complicated, but, for me, it is profound.

Be totally present to the moment.

Raja is never half-here. When he walks, he walks. When he rests, he rests. When he looks at you, you feel seen. He does not rehearse the past or plan the future. He meets what is actually happening, fully and without distraction.

Greet those you love with great enthusiasm.

Every reunion matters. Every return is worthy of celebration. Even if it has only been five minutes. Especially if it has only been five minutes.

Always return to your natural state of happiness.

Raja may ache. He may move slowly. But his default setting is joy. He does not build an identity around pain. He rests, he adjusts, and then he returns, again and again, to his essential happiness.

Live life as if each day is an adventure.

Not because it is grand, but because it is alive. A walk is not just a walk. A breeze is not just a breeze. It is this day’s adventure.

Immediately and completely forgive.

No grudges. No resentment. No story about what should have happened. Let it dissolve. Return to the loving connection.

Be unconditionally loving.

Love without bargaining. Love without testing. Love without fear of loss.

Look at people so they can see your soul in your eyes.

Raja’s gaze is direct, open, and undefended. Soul full.

Jump up and down when experiencing joy.

Joy wants a body. Let it move you. Let it be visible. Let it be ridiculous if it needs to be.

Play makes everything better.

Even aging. Even pain. Even grief.

Drink lots of water.

Seriously.

The Dao doesn’t hurry us forward or push us back. It simply invites us to yield. To go with, and cherish, the flow. To wander free and easy through all the transformations, all the phases, of our life. To experience whatever is changing as part of the Way.

Raja seems to know this already. I’m still learning. But for now, we’re learning together.

Writing Love

Sure, I write words to an imaginary someone about holiness and love. Many years ago, when I was young, I worried plenty about words. Words I wrote, words I said, words I thought, words you thought, words you spoke. Too few words and I was lonely; too many words and I was lost.

Now, in the postmortem of my youth, in the shadowy dark of the shady side of the mountain, in the nowness of ripened silence and sweet stillness, the words dissolve. Or perhaps metamorphose into tenderness, or curiosity, or bewilderment, or a knowing gnawing at the heart, or, on occasion, a kaleidoscopic clarity.

Please, do not give this a word. Alright, give it a word. Call it holy. Holy as in a fly trapped in an illuminated spider web under the quarter moon. Holy as we are all in this remembering together. Holy, as when it rains, each of us gets wet.

Then there is the issue of the Divine Word. Not really a word at all. And by really, I mean reality, and by reality I mean wordless, and by wordless I mean a breath, a vibration on the other side of suffering. I mean, human hearts dissolving into human hearts. I mean the universe giving birth to itself through us. I mean love.

Imagining Love

At this moment, I am imagining myself as love. Each beat of my heart, every breath, every last bit of it, love. Being love, this moment, I say this to the trees, the ocean, and the earth beneath my feet: "Forgive Me.” When I fully realize I am love, imagining this moment, it is remarkable how extraordinary I recognize this moment to be. In love, I place limitless love at the feet of my beloveds. Knowing now every being I meet is my beloved. No matter how many times I say, “I love you," there is always more love. So I say this to you now, "I love you." 

Seeking Love

There is a cave full of precious treasure deep inside of you. So I will say this: Do not wander far away seeking spiritual satisfaction. The sea of limitless love will not be found there. Sure, go ahead, light another candle. Just know this: The love you seek is found within.

Hearing Love’s Call

This moment, I hear your call. I hear your call to transform my personal fear into a lifelong and loving commitment to support the most vulnerable among us. I hear your call to transform my anger into loving action for all our planet’s beings, whose threat is greater now than ever before. I hear your call to quiet my racing and shouting mind and listen deeply to others so that I may know and lessen the burden on their hearts. I hear your call to breathe deeply into my sadness and grief so that I may experience each breath as part of the great web of life now requiring my love. I hear your call to experience my worry and rumination so that I can fully feel the ancient wisdom of my deepest self calling me awake to this moment. I hear your call to mend my shattered and aching heart with kindness, compassion, and love for all who cross my path.I hear your call to love.

By Water’s Edge

Waking with my thoughts, there is no satisfaction. Grasping for happiness, it slips through my fingertips. By water’s edge, listening to waves meeting shore, moonlight glistening in gray sky, I am content.

Unearthing The Vastness

Few things are as pleasing when I finally get them as they were tempting when I was desiring them. The joy of satisfying my desire quickly transforms into more desire. When I do no thing, I learn the lasting pleasure of discovering how much I do not need. Discovering all that I do not need, I enjoy unearthing the vastness of all that I already have. This is loving the Tao.

Responding To The Mysterious Call

Love is a mystery. Mystery is subtle, unseen, limitless. Consumed by my perceptions, seduced by my thinking, caged in my personality, walking in my burdened body, I lose love. Responding to the mysterious call, dissolving what I do not need, I too become subtle. The mystery, the Way of divine consciousness, is the true purpose for my human experience. Divine mystery seeks to birth through my human form. When I walk in the divine mystery, I am love.

When You Feel Hopeless, Do No Thing

The world has a beginning. Call it Tao or call it mother. Love mother, see Tao. To see Tao, dim the lights and look in ordinary places. Or do this: look out, see love everywhere. To love the mother, feed her children. See all beings as the mother’s children. To be successful, stop trying. Acceptance is the Way. Close your mouth often to speak wisdom. Put your fingers in your ears to hear. Welcome your fear of death and be free. When you feel hopeless, do no thing. All this is called flowing in limitless love.

The Shore Is Acting Like Rocks

This I realize more each day: letting go of attachments is easy. It is much harder to resist the hate. What has happened has already happened. What has not yet happened needs no attention. Now is the time to know the now. This is why I love the moon. Besides knowing it is there, there is no thing to know. In my garden, there is no dust to sweep. Trying to end my delusions, they increase. Still, the moonlight illuminates the leaves. The water is behaving like waves. The shore is acting like rocks. See how they know their oneness.

My mother, Bracha Nevel, passed away in 1991. She loved stories and loved to share her wisdom in stories. She never knew this story, but I share it with you now in her honor. It’s about how an herb, Zhi Mu, got its name and the heart of the mother.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the women who share their hearts and those who know and love the heart of the Mother.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there lived an old woman who was a masterful herbalist and healer. Her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmothers had all been herbalists before her, making her the carrier of generations of wisdom. Her passion for herbs and healing, combined with her deep curiosity, drove her to travel great distances to acquire the best herbs and share her knowledge. She journeyed through forests, deserts, swamplands, and mountains, collecting remedies from the land. Not only was she wise, but she was also powerful and resilient.

As she grew old, she realized it was time to find a worthy apprentice to carry on her lineage. However, she had no children of her own, nor did she possess a large herbal pharmacy. She had given away most of her herbs to the poor in the towns and villages she passed through. What she did have was a life of knowledge and lifetimes of wisdom, passed down from the generations of women before her. Eventually, she devised a unique way to find her successor.

She disguised herself as a beggar and traveled to a nearby city. She wandered the streets, announcing that she sought an apprentice who would treat her as a mother and learn the sacred art of herbalism. She believed that through this journey, she would meet many people and find the right person to inherit her wisdom.

First, she met a young man from a wealthy family. Upon hearing her story, he decided to learn her secrets to increase his fortune. He welcomed her into his home, providing lavish meals and every comfort. After a week, he said, “Now, Old Lady, I have fulfilled my part of the bargain. Tell me your secrets.”

The old woman was startled. “No,” she said. “I will not begin teaching you for several years.”

The young man had no patience for this. He threw the old woman out onto the street.

Next, she met a wealthy businessman. He, too, saw an opportunity for profit and invited her into his luxurious home, treating her with kindness. After a month, he said, “Now, Old Lady, I have done my part. Tell me your secrets.”

Again, she refused. “I will not teach you for another couple of years.”

The businessman, like the young man before him, had no patience. He threw her out onto the street.

The old woman continued her search, begging on the streets and muttering to passersby that she would teach her wisdom to the one who accepted her as their mother. People regarded her as mad and ignored her.

After many months, she walked many miles to a small village on the edge of a deep forest. Exhausted, she sat down in front of a humble home and fell asleep. When she awoke, a poor woodsman stood before her, his eyes filled with kindness. He carried a bundle of wood he had gathered from the forest.

“You are tired,” he said. “Come inside and have supper with my wife and me.”

That evening, and many evenings after, the old woman dined with the woodsman and his wife. Over time, the couple said to her, “Our parents are no longer living. We would be honored if you stayed with us so that we may have you as our mother.”

The old woman agreed, and they became a family.

The old woman, the woodsman, and the woodsman’s wife began to take journeys through the forest together. They delighted in the scents of the plants, the sounds of the animals, and the beauty of the land. They laughed together and shared stories. One day, they reached a valley between two mountains, where plants flourished in extraordinary abundance. They sat down to eat their lunch, and the old woman pointed to a patch of plants.

“See this plant?” she said. “If you dig up the root and rhizome, slice it, and brew it into tea, it will clear lung heat, moisten dryness, and relieve cough. Of all the nourishing yin herbs, it is the easiest to digest. Pick it in the spring or autumn.”

Then, she asked them, “Do you know why I waited so long to teach you about herbs?”

The woodsman thought for a moment before answering, “Because you needed to be sure that we were trustworthy and would use this knowledge wisely?”

The old woman nodded in satisfaction. The woodsman and his wife then asked her, “What should we call this plant?”

She paused, thoughtful. “Until now, this plant had no name. You may call it Zhi Mu, Know the Mother, because just as you now know this plant, you know my heart. You know the heart of the mother.”

Wild wisdom is a special kind of wisdom. It whispers from the shadows, calls from around corners, perfumes us from the mist, and rattles us through the earth beneath our feet. Don’t try too hard to understand it. Just breathe and see what happens.

Wild Wisdom Awakening

Today, the old you will die. Time is a trickster. The old you never existed. Every breath is a death. Try not breathing and see what happens. Wild wisdom chuckles. We die because we must. This entire world is an illusion. So is our separate sense of. Still, with all this dying, all things lead home to love. Somewhere in your heart, you know these words are true. The mind resists, but your heart knows what it knows.

A Wild Wisdom To Do List

1. Smile for no reason.

2. See holiness in the eyes of strangers.

3. Celebrate your dependence on others.

4. Know with love there are no others.

5. Sing when the situation calls for it.

6. Surround your enemy with compassion.

7. Spend time today playing with your friends.

8. Warm your fiercest fears into a savory stew and enjoy.

9. Welcome the impossible.

10. Bask in the incomprehensible.

11. Practice kindness when you feel lonely and alienated.

12. Express your anger with a whistle and a strut.

13. Cultivate limitless curiosity.

14. When you don’t know what to say, listen.

15. Let the nowness of your next breath swallow you whole.

16. Enjoy the divine symphony that is your beating heart.

17. Honor all that you do not know.

18. Walk each step with gratefulness for Mother Earth.

19. Let the cosmic breath blow you away.

20. Invite the divine to have her way with you.

21. Bark with dogs, meow with cats, venerate ants.

22. Recite sweet poems to your deepest worries.

23. Listen to the silence worshiping your bones.

24. Dissolve your most coveted ideas.

25. Place peace as pebbles on your path.

26. Invite gratitude to be your tender guide.

27. Howl at the moon, wash regularly in her luminous light.

28. Shower your vulnerabilities with happiness and joy.

29. Find your kindest self in the suffering of others.

30. See the wisdom in the teachings you call nonsense.

31. Enjoy eternity pulsing through your blood.

32. Whisper love songs to everyone you meet.

    ---

Wild Wisdom Invocation

Take a breath. Put down your well-earned hesitation. Leave all that you do not need at the lonely shore. Let the moonlight tease your sorrow full heart. Come on. You know this is what your bones desire. Bow deeply in the dark. This is your destiny. Eat and dance in the blood of your ancestors. Heal your heart. Breathe your next breath as if the divine is watching. Place a flower at the ash pile of your memories. Burn a candle for all that you do not need. Think with your feral imagination. Bend and shout, welcome home to your ghosts. Carefully embrace your aching anger. Blow a kind kiss to your greatest fears. Dance a slow, sensual dance with your grief. Create magic and transform your worry into compassion. Befriend your cruelest thought. Be here now. Look in the mirror and stare into the eyes of your beloved. Love this moment with all your being. Know this moment you are love. Have a warm cup of tea with your bubbling doubt. Look up and see hope. Look out and see possibility. Look down and feel Mother Earth holding you. Look in and know you are her. Take a breath. Put down your well-earned hesitation.

I am grateful for the earth beneath my barefoot feet. I am grateful for the birdsong and the frogs that are keeping beat. I am grateful for the cool breeze gently caressing my cheek. I am grateful for the whiff of salt and mangroves wafting off the bay. I am grateful for the soft moonlight illuminating my way. I am grateful for this sip of sweet and bitter tea. I am grateful for the distant hum of early morning bees. I am grateful for the sunrise and her pinkish-orange hues. I am grateful for this next breath and this precious moment, too. I am grateful for this life and this one and only day. I am grateful to each of you for reading what I have to say.

I have been thinking about gratitude, what it means to be human, and grateful. Then the compassionate one, her welcoming space between the breaths, leaned over as if compassion has a body, knowing full well that time sometimes stands still. Call it hope. Finally, she whispered, kindly, insistently, the truth is not what you think it is. Then there is the story, the butterfly dreaming she is human, this business of being human, each day a covenant with the day before. I know this. I walk with the bones of my ancestors. I cannot recall their names, but I see you with their eyes and their broken hearts. Still, I remember Jane’s blue eyes the first time we met, a dream. Then there is the other dream, the one where I dream I am dreaming, the one where I am dead, watching me dream, dreaming death. Now I am alive, not for long though, recently arrived. Ask the moon. Soon, long gone. Ask the sun. Now, just sitting here, a gentle breeze whispering at the window, the dog breathing on the floor, Jane sleeping in the bedroom, dreaming this moment, dreaming this breath. Aaah, this breath, such a gift of love, such kindness. How else could I be but grateful?

Today, I will be grateful. Grateful for the mystery that is this life. Today, I will acknowledge with deep gratitude the unknown, the unseen, the unheard, the unthought, the unimagined, the unrecognized, the unintelligible, the unbearable, the undiscovered, the unbelievable universe that holds us all in her cosmic womb. Today I will bow a deep bow of gratitude for my abundant blessings, great and small. Today, I will allow my mind and heart to see and feel the limitless grace bestowed upon me. Today, I will become a conduit of that grace for all who cross my path. Today I will bow a deep bow to my suffering, great and small. Today, I will allow my suffering to guide my mind and my heart to the greatest possible wisdom and compassion. Today, I will be a grateful messenger of that wisdom and a kind carrier of compassion. Today I will acknowledge Mother Earth and all my plant, animal, and mineral brothers and sisters who sustain me at all times with their kind presence. Today I will honor them by walking mindfully on my path. Today I will be grateful for the moon, the sun, the winds, the rain, the heat, the cold, the hard, the soft, the heavy, the light, the ease, the dis ease, the straight, the twisted, the resonant, the dissonant, the ups, the downs, the outside, and the inside. Today, I will be grateful for the preciousness of each breath I breathe. Today, I will be grateful for me. Today, I will be grateful for you. Today, I will be grateful.

No thing Under The Full Moon

In her womb of no thing, under the full moon of the world, the undifferentiated wholeness hovers. Birthing now, fiercely so, full of love. Drenching ten thousand things in her reflected light. Spitting fire, call it dawn, morning, time. Light shattering no-thing with her ten thousand things: illusions. Still, she digs into my skull/heart/womb, growing tiny puddles into vast, limitless, timeless seas. Dark womb oneness, embodiment of love, forever I chant your name: this pain I swallow; this blood-red hibiscus I place at your feet; this breath I breathe. Beginningless, endless, this moment, now. This unreal, surreal, non-existent moment: call it time. Here, there, everywhere, nowhere: call it space. Your brilliance burns it all to ashes: call it death. Your dark makes it all disappear: call it birth. Unborn, undead, unchanged, unchanging: call it no thing.

Full Moon Moment

Some say this exquisite full moon moment has happened many times before, but I know otherwise. Full moon just birthed this moment. When moon is at her flamboyant fulles the shadowy bones of the ones I loved most often arrive with huge smiles and wide open loving arms. There is tender kindness under the full moon light, a limitless spaciousness that invites curiosity, compassion, and plenty of room to make human mistakes. Some times I call her empty luminous love; other times I call her my beloved mother. This moment, she is a nameless womb holding my heart.

Full Moon Wisdom

Shower love and light on the path of every one you meet, she says. Shower love and light on the path of those who adore you; shower love and light on the path of those who abhor you—adore or abhor. Shower love and light on their path. Shower love and light on the path of the ones who greet you with grace; shower love and light on the path of the ones who greet you with wrath. Shower love and light on the path of the needy; shower love and light on the path of the greedy. Shower love and light on the path everywhere you go, and everywhere you go there will be showers of love and light.

“Where is happiness found?” I asked the moon.“Happiness is found in the womb of love,” replied the moon.“Where is the womb of love found?” I asked the moon.“The womb of love is found in your one true home,” replied the moon.“Where is my one true home?” I asked the moon.“Your one true home is in your breath,” the moon replied. “What is the way home to my breath then?” I asked the moon. ‘There is no way to home to your breath,” the moon replied. “You and your breath are not separate things.”So what do I do?” I asked the moon. “Breathe your next breath,” replied the moon.

The moon, this cloudy morning, called to my soul with her crooked smile. “Today, in return for my crooked smile, I’d like to see the rainbows flowing from your heart”. Sheepishly, I replied, “ My dear Moon, I have no rainbows flowing from my heart. All I can offer you is this single sad tear flowing down my cheek.” The moon, smiling, took the tear from my cheek, tore open my chest, and with great force tossed the tear crashing against my heart. “This is how we make rainbows, my child. This is how we make rainbows.”

Hanging out with Mother Moon, parrot, iguana, and manatee are my neighbors. They, too, are there to celebrate the moon. So much love. Once I settle my busy mind, each of them speaks to me. They share strange tales of sky and earth and sea. Finally, having my full attention, they ask, “Your people, born with such gifts, why can’t they be more loving?”

These are things I remind myself of daily.

The earth beneath my feet has no interest in counting my steps. The clouds and sky do not care about my story. Neither know of tragedy nor good fortune. They exist, and their existence is the blessing.

Whenever I grasp for happiness, it slips through my fingertips. Walking with my thoughts, there is not a trace of fulfillment. Pausing to watch a breeze move a fallen leaf, I am content.

Act only when necessary. Solve big problems with little or no action. Listen as much as possible. Say as little as possible. Do not offer solutions. Many claim to have solutions. Very few understand the consequences of their solutions.

Few things are as pleasing when we finally get them as they were tempting when we desired them. The joy of satisfying a desire quickly transforms into another desire.

Do nothing. Learn the lasting pleasure of discovering how much you do not need. In discovering all that you do not need, enjoy unearthing the vastness of all that you already have.

Letting go of attachments is easy. It is much more difficult to dissolve the hate. What has happened has already happened. What has not yet happened needs no attention. Now is the time to know the now. This is why I love the moon. Besides knowing it is there, there is no thing to know.

When I try to end my illusions, they increase. In my garden, there is no dust to sweep. Still, the moonlight illuminates the leaves. The water behaves like waves. The shore acts like rocks. Somehow, they know their oneness.

What is it like to flow in Dao? Here is what I can tell you about how it seems to me: an old fella watching the breath.

The divine mystery births through our human form. When we deny the divine birthing, we feel separate and suffer. Embracing the mystery, we are one and in love.

I have meditated in one form or another for most of my life, with a formal practice spanning nearly fifty years. That said, I have had a rather fluid understanding of exactly what meditation is.

I now very simply “define” meditation as the practice of cultivating awareness.

In this context, cultivation is the process of developing a quality or skill.

“Awareness is our capacity to be conscious of our human experience. To perceive and understand our cognition, imagination, senses, embodied emotional world, breath, and connection to something greater than our individual self.”

People meditate for many reasons: to manage stress, to cultivate equanimity, or perhaps to become more “spiritual.”

I meditate to become a more competent human being.

For me, meditation transcends any single practice. It is an ongoing, lifelong journey of tending to and unfolding my humanity, and the limitless love that we all exist in.

Meditation is more than sitting or standing meditation, prayer, or focused spiritual practices. These are certainly part of it, but meditation is far broader than any single action or ritual. Meditation encompasses any practice that enhances awareness of the mind (cognition and imagination), the senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell), the emotional body (including joy, sorrow, anger, fear, and grief), the breath, and the spirit.

Meditation, for me, is living a more integrated, satisfying, and loving life by consciously engaging with all the aspects that make us human.

The journey of meditation, as I see it, is not about isolating or elevating certain traits, nor about achieving some lofty “out there” goal. It is about becoming more fully human, more alive to the moment, to the world, and to our shared humanity. Through meditation, we open ourselves to the mystery and magnificence of each moment, recognizing that everything we encounter is part of a vast, cosmic dance. In this dance, we are both participants and observers, experiencing and embracing the unfolding of life with curiosity and love.

I explore meditation in two primary contexts: dedicated meditation and integrative meditation.

Dedicated meditation refers to the time and space intentionally set aside for practice. This may take the form of a seated meditation, a yoga practice, or a contemplative walk in nature. These are moments we consciously create to turn inward and cultivate presence and awareness. While we can choose when and where we practice, what arises within these spaces is often beyond our control. Here, we make room for stillness, insight, and growth by allowing rather than forcing.

Integrative meditation, on the other hand, is the practice of meeting every moment as an opportunity for awareness. It is the choice to embody presence in the midst of daily life. While driving, cooking, parenting, working, engaging in casual conversation, or yes, even when arguing. Integrative meditation invites us to live as both participant and observer, fully engaged yet calmly aware. It dissolves the boundary between “spiritual” moments and “ordinary” ones. In this way, all of life becomes a meditation.

All of life becomes an opportunity to cultivate and experience love.

These two modes are not separate; they inform and nourish one another. Together, they form a holistic approach to meditation, a dedicated practice that deepens awareness and everyday living, that allows us to embody that awareness fully.

The ultimate purpose of meditation is not, for me, about perfecting skills, reaching a particular goal, or attaining a higher state of consciousness. Rather, it is to become competent at being human. Yet, paradoxically, being human is not something to master; it is something to experience fully.

Through meditation, we learn to live with greater presence, discovering joy and wonder in the simplest moments. We begin to witness ourselves and all that crosses our path as part of a greater whole. We start to see that everything and everyone is unique, precious, and interconnected. This shift in awareness allows us to recognize ourselves as expressions of the universe, giving birth to itself through us. Here, love is no longer an idea or ideal, but an intimate, lived experience.

One of the profound effects of regular meditation is the gradual dissolution of the illusions and distortions that shape our inner and outer worlds. Meditation begins to soften the stories, beliefs, and emotional patterns that cloud our perceptions born of past conditioning. As awareness deepens, we learn to tend to our inner landscapes, thoughts, imagination, senses, and emotions with care, compassion, clarity, and love. This gentle tending is the heart of meditation: the conscious cultivation of ourselves and our relationship to the world, until we begin to see things more clearly, as they are.

What remains as these illusions dissolve is not emptiness or loss, but reality itself—the raw, unfiltered experience of being alive. The thinking mind cannot grasp this reality. It is experienced directly, as undifferentiated wholeness. As limitless love. In this space, striving falls away. Control softens. We allow life to unfold according to its own nature. This is the womb in which meditation truly flowers. When we stop forcing, the deeper wisdom of the universe moves through us.

We meditate not to become something else, but to return to what we have always been.

This is the essence of meditation practice, a journey home to our true nature. The Way to wholeness and limitless love has always been present. Meditation is not about becoming new, but about returning to the womb of who we are. It is a remembering of our place within a love-saturated cosmos.

In this return, we discover that everything is enough. We are enough. Everything is love. We are love.

This, for me, is the journey of meditation: not a path of mastery, but one of curiosity, awareness, presence, and love. It is the ongoing unfolding of our true self, and the recognition that we were and are always part of the undifferentiated whole.

Always part of the limitless love.

I invite you to check out my upcoming Meditation Mini-Retreat in Miami, Florida.

Meditation Mini-Retreat

First, A New Year’s Invitation

I invite you to look around. We are living in a world of miracles and love. Look again. You and I are miracles and love. We do not need to live this year as if time is a thin line, or a series of challenges to overcome, or happiness to seek. We all have these beautiful, imperfect bodies we are navigating through the times of our lives and the stuff we call space. We may be doing so awkwardly, and yet we are still here inspiring awe. Perfectly imperfect beings with perfect souls, we all are. My least confused and most hopeful self must say this to you now: let’s just stop trying to fix ourselves. Let’s take our eyes off the prize. Let’s all just get extraordinarily lazy together. Let’s all live our lives as if we are miracles and love.

Next, My New Year’s Resolutions

This year, I will be brave in my love. I will look for holiness in the eyes of strangers. I will sing for no reason at all. I will be kind to those who despise me. I will spend time playing with friends. I will welcome the impossible and incomprehensible. I will hug a tree as if my life depends on it. I will cultivate my anger into healing rainbows. I will be curious, and I will listen. I will breathe as if each breath is a gift. I will tune in and enjoy my beating heart. I will honor all that I do not know. I will walk tenderly on my Mother Earth. I will let the cosmic winds blow me away. I will invite the divine to have her way with me. I will howl with the dog and meow with the cats. I will recite poems to my deepest worries. I will let go of a coveted idea. I will invite gratitude to be my generous guide. I will fall to my knees with awe beneath the moon. I will whisper love prayers to everyone I meet. This year, I will be brave in my love

Finally, My New Year Blessing for You

This New Year's Day, I offer you the blessing of limitless love. Breathe it in with your next breath. Feel it in the breeze as it caresses your cheek. Know it with every beat of your heart. Look closely and see it in the eyes of a child. Listen carefully and hear it in the voice of your enemy. Sit still and let it surround you with a deep embrace. Run away and experience it rattling in your bones.

Today (in the Northern Hemisphere), we celebrate the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. It is an opportunity for depth and stillness, when we can pause and turn inward together. In Chinese medicine, this moment is known as Absolute Yin, the point of greatest depth and quiet, when all movement has withdrawn to its root. Yet Absolute Yin is never empty or inert. At the very moment Yin reaches completion, Yang is born, subtle and unseen, already beginning its return. The light has not disappeared; it has turned inward. From this deepest darkness, life quietly pivots, and the first stirrings of renewal are already underway. The day offers us the opportunity to experience the essence of hope and gratitude, and to cherish light emerging from darkness. In this spirit, I share these poems with you. Each was written on the Winter Solstice.

Crescent Moon: Winter Solstice

Grasping for hope,
it remains just outside my fingertips

Sitting quietly beneath dark sky
waiting for crescent moon
I am content

On this longest night
old memories emerge
call it the ancestors

An insistent cool wind
call it impermanence
rattles the window

A hummingbird appears
call it a miracle

Death gestates deep in my heart
call it going home

Birth waits just out of sight
call it divine

All this darkness mystery unfolding
call it a blessing

I embrace the dark
call it the womb

So apparent is the faintest light
call it hope

This longest night is proof that love exists
call it holy

Conception Vessel: Ren

In the dark, in the stillness, listen silently to the voice that rises up from your own womb. This is your eternal, endless cave of undifferentiated wholeness. This is you, as Mother, giving birth to the cosmos that inhabits and engulfs your every breath. This moment is your first breath and your last. This place is your birth canal and your everlasting grave. This is this moment, all moments, and no moment. Here is beyond the busied and full marketplace of your mind. Here is beyond the eye of the storm, beyond your soaring soul, beyond the winds, whispers, and whimpering of your full flesh: aching and sighing with your anger, with your joy, with your worry, with your grief, and with your fear. Here, your trembling fright dissolves into vibration, a timeless and universal song of limitless love. Your anger here wilts and whispers worship for the gentle breeze that kisses your cheek. Here with her gripping gravitational love, your universal Mother demands you empty yourself of all hope, of all aspirations, of all desires, of all goals. All your universal flights of fancy just dancing, dissolving clouds on a breezy day. All that you do not need shadowing away in the cool grace of the darker side of sunset, the darkest night of the year. In the dark, in the stillness, in the silence, you listen. With emptied breath, you listen. With emptied ears, you listen. With emptied flesh, you listen. With emptied muscles, you listen. With emptied organs, you listen. With emptied bones, you listen. With emptied heart, you listen. You listen for a single, solitary note of grace from deep within your darkest, dearest Self. It is here you receive limitlessly. Mists from rocks. Trickles from streams. Gushes from rivers. Rains both gentle and hard. Deep tides from the seas. From here…. the light is born.

Winter Solstice (limitless love)

Red Hawk soars with captured prey (no escape). I, too, am captured by this longest night (stillness). Time is exhaling now (compassion). Shadowy light dissolving thought (above is below). Parrots caw, palm leaves rustle in the wind (breathing). Crescent moon light, Bay kissing seawall (mother smiles). Skull chest womb 10,000 things No Thing (redemption). What I say is not true, what I say is not false (silence). Winter solstice. Winter solstice. Winter solstice (limitless love).

I loved you forever from the moment I first saw you. It was, for me, an act of recognition. Anam Cara. Eternal soul mates reuniting in the produce aisle. And yet, if I were to quantify such things, I would most certainly say I love you 1008 times more today than I did on the day we first met. Yes, I know, love is never quantifiable. Love is infinite.

Today, I hold my infinite love for you up for the world to see. In honor of our 43rd anniversary, I recognize our love, and all love, as a generous, holy birthing of limitless divine love. Here’s another thing I’ve learned over these decades. Love births second by second, breath by breath, detail by detail. It was you, beloved Jane, who taught me this. You who showed me this.

You demonstrated, daily and with such spirited grace, the joy to be found in living life through the details. Here is a detail: my heart still soars with the first sounds of your rising in the morning. Another detail: morning tea in the garden with you remains an inexhaustible joy. Another: a single glance from your blue eyes still penetrates directly to the deepest chambers of my heart. Here’s an entire constellation of details: your daily, moment-by-moment, unrelenting devotion to family, friends, and community nourishes me, humbles me, and continues to teach me how love moves in the world.

These past forty-three years have taught me what the great, long-running Harvard study discovered in its own way: that happy long marriages are not built by eliminating differences, but by acceptance, tolerance, and choosing curiosity in their presence. As we lived our way into this wisdom, I learned to stay curious about you, to keep discovering the woman who still surprises and awes me. I learned to see you in context, not in judgment. I learned (finally) that our differences are not obstacles but doorways into deeper understanding, deeper affection, deeper connection.

I learned, or rather, you taught me, to choose connection over correctness. To let the small things stay small. To repair quickly, gently. To hold a generous vision, especially in the moments when we were both tired or overwhelmed or simply human. Through all the years and all the seasons, you have shown me what it means to be someone my partner can truly count on. That is a blessing beyond measure.

There is also the precious space between us, the living “us” that is neither you nor me but something beautifully, mysteriously co-created. Martin Buber called it the Betweenness, that sacred field where two souls meet and recognize one another. The Tao teaches that life happens in the dance between yin and yang, and so it is with us, our love lives and breathes in the space where we meet. Whatever name we give it, this space between us has been a womb that holds us, an ancient circle that closes around us, a space we have tended across forty-three years of marriage. It is where our love breathes, expands, and becomes its fullest self.

Then there’s the laughter. We have laughed together to survive the toughest times (you gotta laugh!), and we have laughed heartily while celebrating the best of times. Your laugh, by the way, is exquisite and outrageous, and most definitely medicine for my soul. The world might not appreciate how tremendously transcendently funny we both are, but we certainly do!

Speaking of humor, getting old together leads to some darkly comic conversations! Like the other day when we decided, “I guess we’re in this until death do us part.” It’s an old phrase, perhaps, and I’m relatively certain we didn’t say it as part of our wedding vows, but while it may accurately describe the limits of our mortal contract, it does not describe the limits of our love. Marriage, as a form, may end at death; love does not. Still, having supported so many patients, dear friends, and family members through illness, dying, and loss, I know the truth that lives in the body when a beloved partner dies. The suffering of the one who remains is real, visceral, and profound. It is a tearing, a separation of flesh, of habit, of shared breath and shared time. I feel a paradox living in me. The ache of not wanting to imagine a world without you, my beloved Jane, and at the same time the deep vow of my heart that I want to be there for you, to hold you, to love you, to walk you home as you take your final breaths. This, too, is part of our love language after forty-three years of marriage!

I know that our love will not disappear! What once moved between our two bodies will enter the great ancestral stream, joining those who loved before us and those who will remember us after. Our relationship will never end. I know this. It will be transfigured, carried forward in the vast stream of time, woven into the limitless womb of love that holds us all.

This awareness fills me with an almost unbearable appreciation for the present moment with you! For this breath, this body, this shared day, this ordinary, miraculous life we are still living together.

Which leads me to grace. The grace and blessing of our children and grandchildren literally bring me to my knees in gratitude. They are, quite simply, the greatest blessings of my life. Our parenting and grandparenting together is a joy beyond anything I ever imagined. You have taught me here as well. When it comes to family, generosity, as is love, is unconditional and limitless.

Jane, you are my dream girl. Living life at your side and growing old with you is a greater blessing than I ever imagined. Each day, each hour, each moment, each breath, each beat of my heart, each second with you, is so precious.

My feral heart found its home in your embrace. How blessed is that?

Jane, my darling, I admire you. I adore you. I cherish you.

You have my heart, my devotion, my love; yesterday, today, tomorrow, and forevermore.

.

Thinking of my dad and holding him close to my heart today on the 105th anniversary of his birth. He was a brilliant, kind, humble, and loving man. Dad was my first healer and my first model for what healing could be.

As a child, when I was not feeling well, physically or emotionally, his healing presence and energy were a reliable blessing. He was a seriously skilled, self-trained foot reflexologist and a naturally gifted energy healer who used his hands as conduits for healing. During these sessions, he would sing or lightly chant short passages or songs that I now know were positive affirmations. Dad was a healing autodidact of the highest order; his studies led him to translate many ancient and modern Jewish healing texts from Yiddish into English. Although Dad was not a professional healthcare provider, he generously shared his gifts.

One of my favorite childhood memories is walking into my dad’s office to find a shoeless United States senator, feet on my father’s desk, receiving a foot reflexology treatment for his headache. It helped, by the way. His healing and love knew no bounds. He believed and demonstrated that every moment is an opportunity to share a little healing, to spread some joy.

I continue to be blessed by his healing and his lived wisdom, and I am honored to share this living wisdom, the lessons my father taught me through both words and deeds.

Joseph Nevel’s Living Wisdom

Love with your whole heart.
It only takes one minute to change your life.
God wants you to smile.
Don’t judge others until you hear their whole story.
The youngest, oldest, poorest, and most vulnerable among us need our love the most.
Don’t try to be smarter than other people. Try to be kinder.
If you tell the same joke often enough, it becomes funny.
Everyone is beautiful inside. For some, it’s just very deep inside.
Every moment is an opportunity to spread some joy.
If you don’t know what to say, just listen.
No one is better than anyone else.
No child should ever go hungry.
Strive to be cheerful every day.
Grandchildren are life’s sweet desserts.
If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say it.
Don’t do anything during the day that will keep you up at night.
Being happy is much more important than being right.
Children are always welcome.
Good deeds are done for their own sake.
Food tastes best when shared with as many people as possible.
The highest form of charity is anonymous.
If you can’t get through to someone with ordinary speech, try singing.
You don’t need a special occasion to be kind to others.
A kind word is remembered forever.
When choosing, choose the highest path.
Cultivate gratitude and contentment as a way to a happy life.
Angry and jealous thoughts release toxins into the system.
If it hurts someone else, don’t do it.
If someone is acting poorly, they must be having a bad day or a hard life.
Your most important possession is your reputation.
Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor.
Assume the best of others, and you will most often get it.
Always take care of your family.
Treat everyone you meet like family.
Our hands can heal others if we let love flow through them.
Real men grow sprouts and sew.
A father’s love should be unconditional, reliable, and forever, like moonlight.

I have come to feel that gratitude itself is not a single emotion, but rather a sacred act of recognition. A remembrance and knowing that nothing in our lives is earned alone or carried alone. The English word shares roots with “grace,” pointing toward the awareness that something has been received that was never guaranteed. The classical expressions of gratitude in Chinese culture evoke similar meanings: being moved by the grace that has come to us, the heart being stirred awake by what it has received, and living in a way that honors the kindness that has shaped our lives. In the Daoist view, gratitude is not a virtue to be cultivated through effort, but something that naturally rises when the mind, heart, and breath become quiet and remember their place in the great unfolding. It is not performance or obligation, but the tenderness that forms when we recognize that our blessings are birthed from limitless sources. I have felt this again and again in my work: gratitude as humility, as awe, as the soft realization that every moment of healing, every relationship, and every step on this path has been a gift carried by ten thousand unseen hands.

These memories emerge not as a timeline but as deep feelings. Chinese medicine arrived rather suddenly and became the ground of my life, shaping who I am and how I meet the world. For decades, I have been privileged to witness the wonders that unfold when people open themselves to Chinese medicine, acupuncture, and the healing process. I have been humbled by the grace and tenderness that have walked beside me. These words are offered as a deep bow of gratitude to the path, the practice, and to all who have shared its unfolding.

On December 7, 1982, my wife Jane and I opened the South Florida Healing Arts Center at 850 Washington Avenue on Miami Beach. I still remember, quite clearly, my first “official” acupuncture patient. Abraham (he liked to call himself Vroom…not Abe) was a survivor of the Holocaust, a mighty spirit in a short but square body. Vroom had “small pains all over”. I treated him with L.I.4, Liv 3, Yin Tang, and Du 20. It was what I knew then, and Vroom said it helped.

The Center was way ahead of its time with medical doctors, chiropractors, acupuncturists, physical therapists, massage therapists, colonic therapists, yoga therapists, nutritionists, energy healers, meditation practitioners, and an imaging department that included x-rays, thermography, and Kirlian photography.

In 1982, South Beach was predominantly populated by older individuals (like I am now, and much older than that), many of whom were survivors, along with a sprinkling of urban pioneers and counterculture types living the good life by the ocean for very little money. Our center occupied a large space on Washington Avenue. It was a little holistic healing paradise.

If you had asked me then if I would still be practicing acupuncture and the healing arts in 43 years, I would have given you a blank look because in those days, I was not thinking 43 months ahead. It was a wild time for “alternative medicine”. Acupuncture was newly licensed, and there were still rules against medical doctors and chiropractors working together. Many of our contemporaries were arrested or left the country due to the unwelcoming conditions. At one point, we had three separate government investigations occurring in our clinic. Nonetheless, we were able to serve and help many people. Our center eventually closed its doors, and the doctors and practitioners went their separate (more under the radar) ways. I continued to study and practice acupuncture and the healing arts, meeting many teachers and mentors along the way who deeply impacted my life and my practice.

The bank I used in 1982 no longer exists. The hospital down the block is long gone, also. South Beach has transformed into an international tourist destination, and rent is no longer $5 per square foot on Washington Avenue. Unlike 1982, there are now more than two yoga studios and two Japanese restaurants in South Florida. We can no longer have a meeting of the entire South Florida acupuncture community in one of my treatment rooms. My oldest grandchildren are now much older than my children were then. The elderly of South Beach now occupy a deep and most special place in my heart.

The time of Covid only clarified and magnified for me how blessed I was to have the great good fortune of practicing and teaching acupuncture, wellness, and cultivation as a profession. Although I certainly missed my in-person interactions, I also found unexpected gifts in that period. I grew from the opportunity to practice telemedicine and to teach the medicine I love to an expanded international community. What began as a temporary adaptation became a doorway through which my work and my relationships reached far beyond South Florida. The wisdom of Chinese medicine and the healing arts revealed itself as truly global, and I was able to connect, learn, and share with people from across the world. In that challenging time, the medicine reminded me that its wisdom and impact know no bounds, not geographically, not culturally, and certainly not in its capacity to nurture connection, resilience, and healing.

There have been so many blessings! I have been blessed to practice in the city of my birth, literally down the street from where I was born. I have been blessed to treat people from ninety-six different countries. The diversity has blessed me with lessons far greater than I could have imagined. I have been blessed to have my patients allow me into their lives in the most intimate of ways in their most challenging times. I have been blessed to treat four generations of many a family. I have been blessed to work with pregnant moms, watch their babies grow up, and have babies of their own. I have been blessed to observe and participate as my patients have met great challenges with grace and dignity and courage and gratitude. I have been blessed by patients who have welcomed me along as they made their final journey. I have been blessed with magnificent colleagues and students who have grown into a beautiful and supportive community that I am so proud to be a part of. I have been blessed to do the work I love while living life alongside the great love of my life, my beloved Jane. I have been blessed with two adult children I love and admire deeply, and five grandchildren who make every day a blessing. To have work one loves nurtured by family one adores is more blessing than a person deserves.

When I reflect on why these blessings have shaped me so deeply, I find myself returning again and again to something that lives at the heart of this work. I have come to understand, in a way the classical texts hint at but life itself has confirmed, that the true healing has always lived in the space between healer and patient. In many wisdom traditions, it is said that healing begins when the healer becomes empty, listens deeply, and meets the person before them without judgment or agenda. I have learned this again and again from those who entrusted me with their stories. Chinese medicine arrived in my youth and, over time, revealed that the field between two human beings can be its own pulse of transformation: the shared breath, the willingness to be seen, the tenderness that rises when courage meets vulnerability. I have witnessed miracles unfold in that space. The kind that do not announce themselves, but appear like the soft turning of a tide when someone begins to heal. I have been humbled by the grace that walks there, and by the countless folks who met me with honesty, dignity, humor, sorrow, resilience, and unguarded humanity. If there is one truth the medicine has etched into me, it is that we do not heal in isolation. We heal in relationship, and the relationship itself is powerful medicine.

Over time, I began to recognize that this sacred relationship is its own form of love, rarely spoken aloud, but felt in the marrow of the work. The ancient Greeks called it philia. The love that grows from care, respect, virtue, and the wish for the other’s wholeness. In the Daoist writings, this tenderness has been understood not as a moral effort or an act of goodness, but as something that arises naturally when the mind is clear, the heart is still, and the spirit is settled. Laozi wrote (and I paraphrase) that when the true Way is forgotten, society must invent benevolence. But when we return to simplicity, presence, and emptiness, this quiet human warmth forms naturally, like dew on grass. I have felt it again and again in the healing space: not prescribed, demanded, or practiced, but emerging as the natural expression of two people meeting one another truthfully in pursuit of healing. For this, I am grateful.

Woven through and supporting all of these blessings has been the sacred relationship between teacher and student. In the classical traditions of Chinese medicine, this bond was understood as a living vessel. A meeting place where wisdom, humanity, skill, and ethical posture were transmitted through presence as much as instruction. The Neijing speaks of this transmission as occurring when the teacher is empty and the student sincere, reminding us that the heart must be open for true learning to unfold. A teacher carried the lineage, guarded the integrity of the medicine, transformed that wisdom, and offered their way of seeing as much as their knowledge. A student received not only methods and points, but humility, discernment, and the courage to meet suffering directly. In this reciprocity, both were shaped. The teacher poured forward the ancient pulse of the medicine, and the student renewed it with sincerity and inquiry. What passed between them could never be reduced to technique: it was transmission, a quiet covenant to preserve what is true, to protect what is fragile, and to steward the medicine with dignity. The love that forms in such a field is subtle, dignified, and steady. The shared recognition that both stand in service to something greater than themselves. I have been blessed to be both teacher and student in this sacred dynamic and am, for this, deeply grateful.

Of course, at the heart of all of this stands my beloved Jane. It was Jane’s vision and insistence that got me into acupuncture and natural healing in the first place. Jane was a partner in the creation of everything this journey has become. From the earliest seed of the Healing Arts Center to every unfolding chapter of practice, teaching, study, and service, Jane’s vision, courage, intuition, and unwavering devotion shaped our path as fully as my own. She held ideas with me, built possibilities with me, and gave her whole heart to the medicine long before it was understood or accepted. Every space I have worked in, every program we nurtured, every dream that found its way into form, Jane was there, co-imagining, co-crafting, and co-living it. Whatever I have offered through these decades has been inseparable from her insight, her steady presence, her fierce love, and her capacity to meet life with grace and authenticity. Jane has been my companion in practice, my collaborator in creation, my equal in vision, my mirror in growth, the tenderness at the center of our work, and the love that has given all of this both purpose and shape. If there is gratitude that surpasses all others, it is for Jane. For the life we have made, the medicine we have built, and the countless ways we have created and re-created this path together. None of this happens without Jane. Grateful seems too tiny a word.

As I sit now with the mystery and miracle of all these blessings, the teachers and students, the patients and colleagues, the generations of families, and the countless courageous sacred souls who have let me walk beside them, I say this: Thank you! My mind has been broadened and profoundly enriched by you, my heart has been deeply touched by each of you, and the path my life has been exquisitely enhanced for having danced this dance of life and healing with you.

In recognition of our shared past, with anticipation of our shared future, and with profound appreciation for this precious moment.

To each of you,

I offer,

A deep loving bow of gratitude,

Dan

Today is World Aids Day.

Each year on this day, in a slightly different form, I share this remembrance. I do it to honor Jim and to remember all who lived and died with AIDS. My heart needs to keep alive the human stories that can so easily fade with time, and to honor and stand in solidarity with those still living with Aids.

It is forty-three and a half years now since the first reported case of AIDS. Jim was one of the hundreds of patients I treated who were diagnosed and living with AIDS during the late 1980s and 1990s.

More than thirty years later, I still see and feel Jim’s blue eyes, full of fright and love and spirit, as he told me that he was ready, but did not want to die. I remember the feel of my feet on the floor as I pressed them down firmly in a curious attempt to hold back tears. I remember the pounding in my chest and the strange echo-like sensation that reverberated in my head. I remember the overwhelming feeling of love and gratitude that I had for Jim sharing this moment with me. I was his acupuncturist. I had trained for this moment to be empty and empathetic. Yet, here I was leaking tears. Thirty-seven months earlier (we measured in months, not years then), Jim had walked into my office, for the first time, looking for an acupuncturist “comfortable working with AIDS.” He had been diagnosed a few years earlier and was now told that he had less than a year left to live. He was looking for some relief and perhaps, “some grace in my passage.”

Jim’s lungs burned from the pentamidine treatment he had been undergoing for his pneumocystis pneumonia. He was losing weight, had very little appetite, and was generally in “a declining disposition” most of the time. He heard I was good with these sorts of things. After our initial meeting, we became very close, very quickly. Each visit, following a brief conversation about his “ailments of the day,” we would talk, with great depth, of what it means to have a meaning-filled life. Jim was gifted with a quick, sharp mind and an open, kind, and compassionate heart. He often spoke of, and was worried about, what his death would mean to the special needs students he worked with. He was heartbroken at the degree and amount of suffering that had befallen his friends and community. He was sad at the emotional and spiritual damage that his disease had done to his family. He had family members and close friends, whom he loved and who he knew loved him, who would not hug him for fear they would “catch AIDS.” Jim understood, he said, but his heart was still shaken.

On this day, Jim, whose emaciated body was now covered with KS lesions, asked if I would hold him. As I held him in my arms, he sobbed a deep primordial sob, and his body dissolved, like a mist, into mine. After a long while, his sobs became a whimper, and then, after a while longer, there was silence. We sat in this silence in a spaceless space and timeless time for who knows how long. In Chinese medicine, we speak of the Shen, the spirit, being present and observable in the eyes. It was this day and this moment — as I looked deep into Jim’s blue eyes — that I saw and felt Shen flowing from the eyes for the very first time. No more fear there, just pure loving Shen. It was as real as the computer I am writing this on now. It was as vast and as profound as the dark sky and fat moon outside my window. It was the cosmic breath, the dance between heaven and earth, manifesting through the decaying but perfect conduit that Jim’s body had become. After a while, Jim whispered to me, “Now I am at peace.” We hugged, he left my office, and I went and saw my next patient.

Days later, I received a call that Jim, at age 41, was dead. His memorial service at Unity on the Bay (where almost all the memorial services were held for those who lost their lives to AIDS in Miami) was overflowing with family, friends, and colleagues. All had wonderful stories to tell of how beautiful, soulful, and special Jim was. That was November of 1991. I’m tearing up now as I write this. I am still deeply touched and nourished, and blessed by having experienced and witnessed Jim’s exquisitely soulful but all-too-short journey through life and death.

I learned so much from Jim about dignity in life and about grace in dying. Jim is but one of the more than 44.1 million people who have died of AIDS-related illnesses worldwide. There are, as of today, still more than 40.8 million people living with HIV worldwide, and it is estimated that 630,000 will die from AIDS this year.

With Jim as my guide, I will continue to remember and honor those who have passed, support those who continue to live with HIV/AIDS, and unite in solidarity with all those who are continuing to work towards equitable solutions to resolving the inequalities that drive AIDS and other pandemics around the world.

For more information on World Aids Day

New Moon reflected on water. Real or unreal? Nothing is real. Everything is real.

a sliver of light/call it hope/reflects life’s possibilities/a newness fills the air/untapped potentials/readying/waiting to burst forth/new moon energy is infectious/barely but sweetly shining her unconditional love/holding us close in her dark womb/new moon understands the hurts of the human heart/healing as she does with her slow steady unconditional unwinding luminous love/ beginning again/and again/and again/alone/all together/ we grow/divinely dignified in ourshared integrity/waxing now/as always/toward fullness

I’ve long felt that part of my healing, part of my return to myself, depends on reviving and developing my instinctual and intuitive relationship to the moon and the cyclical nature of time. Beneath the noise of modern life and the speed of my thinking, this deeper relationship still lives, almost untouched, waiting. Cyclical time is not an idea for me; it is a direct experience, an internal knowing that emerges only through living it. The moon taught me this.

Hanging out and gazing at the moon has been one of my longest meditation practices. When I watch the moon, I can feel my vital functions soften, exterior inputs quiet, and another kind of perception awaken. In the stillness, I can feel a flux at the center of the stillness, the pulse of the Tao itself, the primordial undifferentiated wholeness that lies at the womb of our existence. This is where I explore and cultivate an archaic level of consciousness, the oldest part of myself, the part that knows how to be in relationship with myself, with the world, and with the time/space continuum long before my contracting cognition took center stage.

Hanging out with the moon enhances my intuitive capacity to relate to time and space as they manifest both within and around me. This is the domain of devotion, compassion, passion, and love. It is a descent into the slow, still dance of the Dao, where anyone can notice the universe breathing as it gives birth to itself, a deep pulse, a flux at the core of it all. This is the true laboratory for studying time.

This relationship, this dancing with the cyclical, assuages my modern anxiety. We all can take a page from the notebook of the archaic humans who still live on the deepest level of our consciousness. When we reconnect with them, we reconnect with the basis of our knowing that we belong to the world. The mind arises out of matter (Mother); this is the key to healing our traumatising dualism.

The moon has taught me the beauty of constancy, the grace that repetition brings. It has shown me the celebration of cycles, the cosmic waves dancing. Watching the moon has connected me, perhaps more consciously than anything else, to my own breath, my own heartbeat, my own falling and catching of myself, the continuous flux that is my own existence.

My own fascination, my own need, has always been to settle into the archaic, the most primordial level. The level before, below, and beyond magic and myth. Well before the rational mind separated itself from the archaic, magical, and mythic layers of consciousness and began to run amok. How deeply disconnected we have become from ourselves, from our ancestors, from every living being, when we have almost no conscious relationship to our closest celestial neighbor.

How is it that we, as a species, can invent technologies capable of traveling to the far reaches of the universe, but we can hardly touch the qualitative experience of the people we love most? What is the magical or mythic experience that you have each moment with your friends, wife, husband, partner, children, or grandchildren? Our modern mind has become phobic, neurotic, even psychotic in its obsession with the rational. We are stuck on the periphery of knowing, without access to the depths. High notes with no low notes. A single-note instrument.

For me, this is simple and deeply relational: the waxing and waning, the ebbing and flowing. The dark moon’s emptiness, this is where my faith, my hope, is tested. Then the absolute ecstasy of the new beginning. That little sliver of grace.

I watch the moon because it will not wax and wane unless I do so. My primordial being knows this to be true. It matters not that my analytical mind thinks otherwise. I work diligently and with joy to cultivate my connection to the archaic, magical, and mythic parts of my consciousness, because these parts still exist and give limitless joy and are nourished every time I dance with my moon.

I know now it does not require letting go or dissolving. It is enough to consider letting go or dissolving. Just the consideration alters the story, shifts the myth, dances the symbol.

The new moon is a perfect moment each month to consider the story we tell ourselves, the myth we are constructing with our lives, the symbol we create by how we move and how we receive the world. This is a thought-empty consideration. How does it feel when we embody the story we tell ourselves?

Beginning again, we grow in integrity as we wax toward fullness.

A glimmer of light, call it hope, reflects life’s possibilities. A newness fills the air. Untapped potentials are readying, waiting to burst forth. Mother’s new moon energy is infectious, barely but sweetly shining, sharing her unconditional love. Holding us close in her dark womb. New Moon understands the hurts of the human heart, healing as she always does with her slow, steady, unconditional, unwinding, luminous love. Beginning again, and again, and again, alone together we grow divinely dignified in our shared integrity, waxing now toward fullness in this most wonderful now.

The dark moon gives the light a place to shine; the light allows us to see the dark. Too much light blinds. We are chasing the light. While entering the myriad states of being, remain in non-being. While entering the ten-thousand things, remain aware of the undifferentiated wholeness, the dark.

Fully exhaled, I bow below the new moon, visible barely in the predawn dark. Inhaling again, I grow in dignity as I wax toward fullness. The Dark Moon understands the hurts of my heart, granting aid in the womb of limitless compassion her dark body provides. This moment is all about the fresh dew of possibilities, untapped passions waiting to burst forth in love.

There is a value in repetition that our novelty-driven culture forgets. Conscious use of cyclic time means returning to the same moment with the same intentionlessness. New Moon, cyclically speaking, is the same time as the first time we ever did anything. It is the source of manifestation, the seed of hope. The dark dying moon phase requires faith. The New Moon rewards that faith.

In my deepest truth, this moment is a collaboration between me, the moon, and the cosmos. What greater sense of belonging is there to have? To know in your flesh and bones that you are a participant, not just an observer.

New Moon energy is always present at the new moon, but our awareness is sometimes small; the movement is below the surface, out of view. We are always stirred by this energy without knowing it. This is another act of faith, dissolving into awareness, going vertical, letting ourselves be moved not by thought but by the deep tide beneath thought.

This is where I return each month, watching the New Moon rise. This is where I remember who I am.

(This rambling post was an unedited “one-take” meandering. My rational mind really wanted to edit it, but my New Moon mind had other ideas.)