loops, links, and thanks

The first weblog I heard about and started to read regularly was Chris Corrigan's parking lot. I am pretty sure that I found the way there via the flurry of connection and information that came out of the Practice of Peace conference in 2003, but it's a post of his in 2004 that I remember as one of my first "ways in" to the what blogs were about. That post referenced the (short and excellent) book Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland which is now one of the dog-eared books on my bedstand. Chris has continued to be my favorite source for a huge array of great and diverse music, contemplation, books, articles, provoking questions & conversation, weblogs, and other stuff he finds or makes, and shares.

Some months ago, Chris added 37days ("what would you be doing today if you had 37 days to live?"), written by Patti Digh in Asheville, NC, to his recommended reads. Always beautiful, inspiring, surprising, always poignant, and so often hilarious, it's become one of my favorites, too. So, last month, Patti wrote that she would be coming here to Seattle to do some work with her business partner David Robinson, would be attending a poetry reading by David's friend Sam Magill, and invited any 37days readers in the area to come say hi and listen to Sam read from his new book "Fully Human."
Reading that post, written from 3000 miles away cluing me in to something just up the road from me, I realized that Sam is the same Sam that my friends David Matteson and Dan Leahy often talk about, the Sam who headed up the Fetzer Relationship-Centered Care project and who has been much influenced by the 5-Element philosophy he learned through Tai Sophia (which is where several of my mentor teachers were trained). Sam and I have a number of other mutual friends, but I had never gotten to meet him before.

I was so pleased for the opportunity to meet Patti, who is as funny and charming and generous as her writing, and to meet Sam, whose poetry is insightful and kind and wise, as well to meet more in their overlapping circles of friends and relations. And, to finally meet David M's wife Debbie, who, like David is full to the brim with very bright, very clear qi. It felt like when you are standing in a circle holding hands with people and then your circle opens up to join with other circles of people (or as David says, "cousins who haven't met yet").

So, Chris: I am sure I am not the only person whose mind and heart and web of relationships has been spectacularly expanded by your continual and open-handed sharing--it would be fascinating to see a map of your wide and deep connectedness (and if it were a map that could light up--it'd be blinding!) Big, on-going thanks, my friend.

And by the way--Patti often recommends the book Art and Fear, too.

each flower containing reflections of all the others
Clematis Drops
by Steve Wall