Rules are not boundaries. Duty is not commitment. And even knowing everything doesn’t replace the sweet holding of connection. I feel support as an inherently relational practice: it is an exchange, a giving and receiving of weight, and strength, and vulnerability. And the thing with all of these is you don’t just know them, you experience them. So we practice listening in and listening out, to be able to hold rather than hold back.
I am quite honestly really nervous about this winter. Yet, I’ve always been fascinated by the restraints of monastic and contemplative lives, by the solitude of chosen aloneness, by the self holding they show, within the support of a structured practice or belief. How to bring that into social engagement and relationship is, maybe, one of my biggest questions.