Letting the cold wind go free

"'It is time.' Each word punctuates life the same way summer's passing punctuates the seasons. Can we invite the Divine to 'let the cold wind go free'--that cold, winter wind that is to come--and so take part in what we cannot avoid? Can we call for fruition of all that we have sown over the months gone by, urging our efforts to their finish even though we do not have final control? Can we accept that what we have not done will remain undone, once its time has past? Within this way of being lies the essence of gratefulness which carries us over our winters."

- Ranier Maria Rilke

I feel lately that I am being dragged, kicking and screaming, to attend the one-year anniversary of my father's death. In these days I vacillate between feeling so alive that I am keenly aware of every morsel of air that enters and leaves my chest--and feeling so anesthetized that I am grateful to be swept away where awareness is not a name I know.

Deep emotion both defines and defies me these days, elusive and familiar as "home"...