Your writing is exquisite. There’s such luminous depth in your words—they invite me into a kind of meditative attention. I find myself slowing down, allowing something deeper to be felt and known. I actually feel myself inside of your experience, and somehow it takes me deeper into my own.
I’m especially touched by your invitation to let pain open perception. Rather than turning away, your words invite me to soften into it—to trust that the ache itself is the threshold. Your images—both visual and verbal—carry me to those liminal moments where awareness tips from the ordinary into the sacred. I love how the body—my body—is not bypassed but honored as a gateway. Aches, breath, and light become openings into revelation. Even now, in my morning candle and firelight, I am opened and held.
The intimacy of your writing allows me to hear your voice speaking directly to me, and I am no longer suffering alone. I don’t need to fix or explain—I can simply bear, as you are bearing. And in that bearing, there is a holiness of presence. You offer a living, breathing immediacy where I, too, can be vulnerable, raw, unguarded—where my heart can be open, even as it breaks. Your words are touchstones for inner companionship, cozying up to places in me that long to be met.
The way you weave the personal and the universal into a sacred ecology is stunning.
Thank you for showing that vulnerability is not weakness but the gateway to the divine. That need is not lack but opening. And that to be eaten by God is not destruction, but deepest communion.
I carry your words with me as a quiet light, speaking gently from within.
For two days, I have come again and again to your words, this heart touched by a quality of transmission in the field of Heart. This communion between us is sacred ground. These are not "my" words or "your" words so much as they are Word opening and holding, stirring a quivering accordance in the heart. And so, my gratitude is utter for your depth of presence. Your presence calls forth a deepening of my own. Together, we become, on that pinhead of pain, "where my heart can be open, even as it breaks." Deep bow in the depths of inner companionship, with love, Renée
Toni, exquisite is such a profoundly rich word and, I believe, on-the-mark description for Renée's writing. When I read her post I felt a familiar deep disturbance, as it called forth a tumble of unruly word shadows clamoring to describe what was stirred in me. Then I read your comment and felt relief; resonance, as your words gave voice to my experience with your own exquisite writing. Thank you.
I am struck by: "familiar deep disturbance," and "tumble of unruly word shadows clamoring to describe what was stirred." The "deep disturbance" is as ineffable as that which we refer to as God; the deep disturbance is, perhaps, the unutterable longing. That which has no words but 'unruly word shadows' tumbling, tumbling, like a breath, like a sigh, like a cry and laughter and bird song. deep bow in the shadows of words, with love, Renée
Renée, this meditation is extraordinary. And I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but once again, our spirits are overlapping. I’ve been contemplating “longing” these past few weeks, especially the quality of longing that enlivens and thrums without need for a fulfillment of that longing. Simply, purely, the unselfing of longing.
And here you are, with the most profound insight. “It will kill you by intoxicating you with breath so sweet you plead it will end and pray it will not; this tender kiss that comes when it comes and never by entreat but more by pain, by sorrow, by suffering the Love affair that is life in this world always and evermore unfinished. It will come by grace in the darkest moment of the darkest hour. And it will annihilate: it will gladly rob you and me of the false self constructed over time to cover over need.”
As if to say, need and longing—our most intimate, embodied experience of the heart of the universe.
Kimberly, why is it no surprise to me that you and I are riding this wave of longing together? You reach so exquisitely into the heart of it: "enlivens and thrums without need for a fulfillment" because, to echo you, longing lives in the "embodied experience of the heart of the universe." We are *given* to longing as a kernel of truth in the universe itself, calling us to it like a moth to an inextinguishable flame. When we die to longing, the heart wakes. Thank you, as always, for your deep presence to these meditations and what you offer them. 🙏❤️
I'm suffering now. 'The beauty' (now) goes, more than arrives as of late. How 'the body' acts to its own accord, is not one of peace- nor sorrow. It is a depth that only 'the experience' knows. I'm lost in it - that labyrinth. 'The unworthiness' builds itself.
Dear Jacob, I receive your words with eternal tenderness. Not peace, not sorrow, but the depths of suffering lived in and through the body writhing, lost in the labyrinth coursing through the body--going back to go forward, turning around in one place, lost. You are suffering. May you be visited by Grace, lifted by Mercy, held in the arms of Tenderness, and may you know that you are not alone. With love to you, dear Friend, Renée
We all wrap ourselves tight around a story and, in doing so, cause our suffering. Why is it that it's only when we can fight no more with that very suffering that we allow the light and peace into our heart? Oh, I know it's not always this way. Sometimes it sneaks in there on the good days, on the days when our deepest knowing doesn't need a particular lesson, but all those other days we tend to hold tightly until we can open up to all that is. There are no words to describe the depth of your writing except thank you❤️
Donna, you ask a poignant question: "why is it that it's only when we can fight no more . . . that we allow. . .?" This wily human will that wants what it wants on its own terms is not so easily surrendered.
Thank you 🙏 for your kind words and heartful presence to these essays, Donna. With boundless love, Renée
Dear Renée,
Your writing is exquisite. There’s such luminous depth in your words—they invite me into a kind of meditative attention. I find myself slowing down, allowing something deeper to be felt and known. I actually feel myself inside of your experience, and somehow it takes me deeper into my own.
I’m especially touched by your invitation to let pain open perception. Rather than turning away, your words invite me to soften into it—to trust that the ache itself is the threshold. Your images—both visual and verbal—carry me to those liminal moments where awareness tips from the ordinary into the sacred. I love how the body—my body—is not bypassed but honored as a gateway. Aches, breath, and light become openings into revelation. Even now, in my morning candle and firelight, I am opened and held.
The intimacy of your writing allows me to hear your voice speaking directly to me, and I am no longer suffering alone. I don’t need to fix or explain—I can simply bear, as you are bearing. And in that bearing, there is a holiness of presence. You offer a living, breathing immediacy where I, too, can be vulnerable, raw, unguarded—where my heart can be open, even as it breaks. Your words are touchstones for inner companionship, cozying up to places in me that long to be met.
The way you weave the personal and the universal into a sacred ecology is stunning.
Thank you for showing that vulnerability is not weakness but the gateway to the divine. That need is not lack but opening. And that to be eaten by God is not destruction, but deepest communion.
I carry your words with me as a quiet light, speaking gently from within.
With gratitude and tenderness, Toni
Dearest Toni,
For two days, I have come again and again to your words, this heart touched by a quality of transmission in the field of Heart. This communion between us is sacred ground. These are not "my" words or "your" words so much as they are Word opening and holding, stirring a quivering accordance in the heart. And so, my gratitude is utter for your depth of presence. Your presence calls forth a deepening of my own. Together, we become, on that pinhead of pain, "where my heart can be open, even as it breaks." Deep bow in the depths of inner companionship, with love, Renée
Toni, exquisite is such a profoundly rich word and, I believe, on-the-mark description for Renée's writing. When I read her post I felt a familiar deep disturbance, as it called forth a tumble of unruly word shadows clamoring to describe what was stirred in me. Then I read your comment and felt relief; resonance, as your words gave voice to my experience with your own exquisite writing. Thank you.
Dearest Becky,
I am struck by: "familiar deep disturbance," and "tumble of unruly word shadows clamoring to describe what was stirred." The "deep disturbance" is as ineffable as that which we refer to as God; the deep disturbance is, perhaps, the unutterable longing. That which has no words but 'unruly word shadows' tumbling, tumbling, like a breath, like a sigh, like a cry and laughter and bird song. deep bow in the shadows of words, with love, Renée
Renée, this meditation is extraordinary. And I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but once again, our spirits are overlapping. I’ve been contemplating “longing” these past few weeks, especially the quality of longing that enlivens and thrums without need for a fulfillment of that longing. Simply, purely, the unselfing of longing.
And here you are, with the most profound insight. “It will kill you by intoxicating you with breath so sweet you plead it will end and pray it will not; this tender kiss that comes when it comes and never by entreat but more by pain, by sorrow, by suffering the Love affair that is life in this world always and evermore unfinished. It will come by grace in the darkest moment of the darkest hour. And it will annihilate: it will gladly rob you and me of the false self constructed over time to cover over need.”
As if to say, need and longing—our most intimate, embodied experience of the heart of the universe.
Kimberly, why is it no surprise to me that you and I are riding this wave of longing together? You reach so exquisitely into the heart of it: "enlivens and thrums without need for a fulfillment" because, to echo you, longing lives in the "embodied experience of the heart of the universe." We are *given* to longing as a kernel of truth in the universe itself, calling us to it like a moth to an inextinguishable flame. When we die to longing, the heart wakes. Thank you, as always, for your deep presence to these meditations and what you offer them. 🙏❤️
I'm suffering now. 'The beauty' (now) goes, more than arrives as of late. How 'the body' acts to its own accord, is not one of peace- nor sorrow. It is a depth that only 'the experience' knows. I'm lost in it - that labyrinth. 'The unworthiness' builds itself.
Dear Jacob, I receive your words with eternal tenderness. Not peace, not sorrow, but the depths of suffering lived in and through the body writhing, lost in the labyrinth coursing through the body--going back to go forward, turning around in one place, lost. You are suffering. May you be visited by Grace, lifted by Mercy, held in the arms of Tenderness, and may you know that you are not alone. With love to you, dear Friend, Renée
We all wrap ourselves tight around a story and, in doing so, cause our suffering. Why is it that it's only when we can fight no more with that very suffering that we allow the light and peace into our heart? Oh, I know it's not always this way. Sometimes it sneaks in there on the good days, on the days when our deepest knowing doesn't need a particular lesson, but all those other days we tend to hold tightly until we can open up to all that is. There are no words to describe the depth of your writing except thank you❤️
Donna, you ask a poignant question: "why is it that it's only when we can fight no more . . . that we allow. . .?" This wily human will that wants what it wants on its own terms is not so easily surrendered.
Thank you 🙏 for your kind words and heartful presence to these essays, Donna. With boundless love, Renée
Wily is the perfect word for our human will!