Monday, January 12, 2009

Meditation on Mindful Parenting: day one

I know that I have discussed this book before on this blog, but it has been a while. Cousin's sister (also cousin) sent the book Everyday Blessings: The Inner work of Mindful Parenting by Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn to me a few years back.

It is one of those lovely books that is really more of an experience than a read, and like a beautiful hike, an experience that can seem different to you once you've grown and changed.

I have a pocket of open energy in my life now and thought I'd return to this again, and maybe try to meditate with it a bit more purposefully, using this blog.

Tonight I am just on the prologues and found the following passage to resonate with me at this moment:

Maybe each one of us, in our own unique ways, might honor Rilke's insight that there are always infinite distances between even the closest human beings. If we truly understand and accept that, terrifying as it sometimes feels, perhaps we can choose to live in such a way that we can experience in its fullness the "wonderful living side by sid" that can grow up if we use and love the distance that lets us see the other whole against the sky.

I see this as our work as parents. To do it, we need to nurture, protect, and guide our children and bring them along until they are ready to walk their own paths. We also have to be whole ourselves, each his or her own person, with a life of our own, so that when they look at us, they will be able to see our wholeness against the sky.

This is not always so easy.

3 comments:

Brigindo said...

Very nice and thought-provoking. I'm looking forward to more.

Brigindo said...

btw, I've left an award for you over on my blog

giddings said...

Hey Brigindo! Sorry I am still wading through everything since the end of the semester... Haven't been keeping up on the blog reading. Will check it out a-sap!