I like you. You're OK.

A few days ago, I returned to my off-grid homestead in Hawaii after spending several weeks with friends and family on the mainland. Leaving my homestead is hard. Not only do I miss the soothing presence of trees, waterfalls, and neighbors when I’m away, but I also contend with anxiety about what, exactly, will be left of the place when I get back. As I sit on the plane, gazing down at the wide blue ocean, I wonder if my truck will still start, or if my propane water heater will consent to turning on after being in the off position for weeks. I tell myself that there’s no disaster I can’t handle with a few days of hard work, while secretly worrying that there is. 

Indeed, when I got home on Sunday, I found that the wild potatoes I’d left in my kitchen had sprouted eight-foot vines curling high into the rafters. A feral cat had laid claim to my toolshed, hunching possessively on a box of solar equipment. The invasive grass I’d worked hard to uproot had taken advantage of my absence to make a comeback. The path to my front gate had been entirely swallowed by lilikoi vines. Worst of all, an intrepid pair of rats had decided that the glovebox of my truck was the perfect home, and had torn up the seat cushions to furnish it. 

I felt a wave of despair. How could I possibly dig out of this mess? I had books to edit and articles to write. Even if I cloned myself, it would still take days to get everything in shape. 

At the same time, a chorus of judgment came into my head. A truly responsible person would have known to mouse-proof the car, cat-proof the toolshed, and toss the wild potatoes outside before going away. After six years in the valley, I was still a bumbling beginner, making the most elementary mistakes.  Maybe I didn’t belong here, after all. 

The next day, I packed a wheelbarrow full of cleaning supplies and headed out to my truck to clean up the rats’ nest. Dry grass clung to my overalls, remnants of the three hours of mowing I’d done that morning; my feet, as usual, were brown with dirt. At the wide, flat area where everyone parks, I ran into two of my neighbors. Although they don’t live in the valley, they come often to clean their ancestors’ graves, and to document the location of gravesites for other families. The bones of their grandparents and great-grandparents lie in the cliffside a short walk from where I sleep. I’ve often thought that if this faraway corner of Hawaii means the world to me, it must mean the universe to them. 

We stood and chatted for twenty minutes or so. They told me about their work on the gravesites, and I told them about some of the lessons I was still learning after six years of working on the land. Before they left, one of my neighbors gave me a big hug. Looking straight into my eyes, she said, “Not many people can live here; the land spits them out. If you’re still here after all this time, you must be pono.” 

“I hope so,” I stammered, surprised and embarrassed by the compliment.  

The Hawaiian word pono roughly translates to “virtuous.” It’s a central concept in Hawaiian culture, applying to both relationships with people and with the ‘aina, or land. It’s sometimes trotted out in public awareness campaigns to encourage tourists not to litter, but its true meaning is much more profound, embodying an entire way of life. Some people compare it to the Buddhist concept of “right relationship”: a continuous process of reducing the harm one does in all areas of life, while cultivating what is harmonious and beneficial.  

As a person with no familial ties to Hawaii, I’m more used to considering the ways my presence in this sacred place is problematic; could my neighbor really be suggesting that she saw some good in me? 

“I don’t hope so, I know so,” she said, giving me a warm smile. 

As they drove away, my embarrassment lingered. It felt undeserved. I even wondered if she was pulling my leg. My mind began to suggest all the reasons I shouldn't take her words at face value. At the same time, I noticed myself resisting the incredible love she’d just poured out for me. What was I so afraid of? Why couldn’t I accept this kindness? It felt so bright it was almost painful, like a sun my eyes weren’t strong enough to see. 

 

 

It’s one thing to recognize when you’ve been blessed, and another thing to let yourself receive it. In Western cultures, we can be caught off guard by spontaneous displays of kindness, or even suspicious of them: surely, the other person is just being polite, or doesn’t know us well enough to realize that we really don’t deserve it. We feel an urge to correct or apologize, rushing to put the candle out instead of appreciating its glow.  

Walking back home after cleaning out the truck, I remembered all the other times my neighbors had blessed me over the years, each of them using different words that boiled down to: I like you. You’re OK. Those interactions lifted me up when I needed it most and filled me with the yearning to live in a way that was worthy of their friendship. These blessings don’t erase the fact that I’m still a newcomer, or that my own ancestors are buried thousands of miles away.  They don't authorize my presence here in some final way—but they do serve as an invitation to keep showing up and doing the best I can.  

I like you. You’re OK. What a powerful blessing that is, and how rarely we remember to give it. Whether you’re a shy child at a new school or a well-meaning adult showing up in an established community, receiving this blessing can mean the difference between sinking or swimming, blossoming or withering away. When kind words are paired with meaningful eye contact, they can effect a mysterious transformation, healing the heart and renewing one’s inner reserves of inspiration, aspiration, and commitment to a common purpose. And when someone smiles at us with sincere kindness and warmth, our mirror neurons light up, flooding us with a sense of well-being. 

As humans living in a highly technological society, we sometimes decry the disappearance of magic from the world—while forgetting that all the magic we need is in our eyes and hearts, the sincerity of our words and the selflessness of our actions. With these magic powers, we can lift up the people around us, inspiring each other to live in a truly virtuous way. 

 

 

It has now been one week since I returned home. I’ve tugged the potato vines down from the rafters, and gathered some old tent poles to build a trellis for them in the garden. I’ve mowed, trimmed, swept and scrubbed, turned upright what was knocked over, and greased what was rusty. I’ve sat under the monkeypod tree with my neighbors, catching up on all that I missed while I was gone. With each of these small actions and interactions, I reconnect with this place, and remind myself that while my homestead may be more haphazard than most, I’m not completely incompetent.  

The Hawaiian saying “Ua mau ke ea o ka ‘aina i ka pono” is often translated as “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.” In other words, the land thrives not only through the skillful tending of its inhabitants, but by the virtue with which they conduct their lives. The land knows if the people are good-hearted, compassionate, and charitable, or if they are greedy, deceitful, and mean, and the plants and animals flourish or wither accordingly.  

When I reflect on these words, I see the ecological wisdom they contain. Forests, oceans, and other ecosystems thrive when people are compassionate and wise; when we do not hoard, waste, or discount the needs of future generations. I also realize that this wisdom is not confined to people who live on farms or in rural areas; city dwellers, too, perpetuate the health of the land when they orient themselves towards virtue in all its forms. Whether you live in a tropical rainforest or a city skyscraper, you can bless the land with your kindness, forethought, and restraint—and the people around you with the sincerity of your words. 

As summer approaches, I wish you all thriving gardens and sunny days. And just in case nobody else has said it to you lately: I like you. You’re OK. 

 

Sincerely, 

Hilary T. Smith 

Senior Editor, Hierophant Publishing 

Finding Your Happy Place

Although it’s hard for me to leave the lush Hawaiian valley I call home, I travel to the mainland about twice a year to visit the friends and family who would otherwise spend a disproportionate amount of time and effort visiting me. Two weeks ago, I got up early, drank one last cup of tea on the porch of the tiny hut which holds my kitchen, turned off the water lines and solar system, loaded my suitcase into a red and grey wheelbarrow shiny with rain, and pushed it through the tall grass. By the time I got to the riverbank where my neighbor was waiting with his truck, my feet were slimy with mud, and the “nice” pants I’d selected for the plane were speckled with the dirt and grit flung up by my sandals with every step.  

I used to despair at the impossibility of making it off my remote homestead in a presentable state. I would get to the airport and feel self-conscious about the burrs on my sweater and the soggy black footprints my boots left on the floor, or the hair I’d forgotten to brush for several days. Now I find comfort in the mud that clings to my ankles and the dirt that hitches a ride under my fingernails. I feel claimed by the valley, as if its steep green walls are saying, Sure, take a trip, but don’t forget where you belong. 

 

 

My first few days in the city are always bewildering. I feel shocked by the presence of so many cars, on so many streets and overwhelmed by the social events that involve not only my close friends, but friends of friends, acquaintances, and strangers. I marvel at the assortment of tasty foods I rarely eat back home: vegan ice cream made from cashews, cups of coffee which are so much stronger than the green tea I normally drink, and mainland fruits like apples and blueberries. 

I can tell that these trips to the “real” world are good for me. I learn a lot from my city friends, who are involved in art, politics, and activism in a way I cannot be, living in as secluded a location as I do. They expose me to new ideas and new experiences I would never encounter in the cozy confines of the valley walls, and I drink these things up thirstily, newly conscious of the limits of my knowledge and perspective. The conversations I have outside the valley serve as a bulwark against the complacency that can settle in when I speak only to the same small group of neighbors day after day, mulling over the same set of hyper-local concerns. I remember (with some shock) that the tiny rural community where I live is not, in fact, the center of the universe, and that there’s more to life than broken chainsaws, lost dogs, and rivers that flood just when you were hoping to go to town. 

But no matter how much I appreciate these aspects of my visits to the city, it’s only a matter of days before a sense of despair comes over me. How can my friends live with so much noise, all day every day? How can they live without trees to prune or gardens to tend? How can they accept an orange sky at night, the stars nowhere to be seen? How can they live so much in their minds, without tools to tinker with or structures to build?  

I open up a map on my internet browser, and gaze morosely at the grid of streets, calculating how far I would have to walk to reach a forest. The thought of driving in a car just to go for a walk in the woods is shocking to me. Instead, I take long walks around the neighborhood, my mind filled with complaints at the absence of tall trees. I spend more time reading and writing, taking advantage of the relative absence of physical labor, and do my best not to seem too affronted by city life—after all, this is my friends’ home. 

I remind myself that many visitors to my homestead feel an equal and opposite sense of discomfort about my living situation. They put on a brave face, while privately asking themselves: How can she live without art galleries, restaurants, people? How can she live in such tiny, ramshackle structures, without a washing machine, a toaster, or a fridge? How can she talk to the same handful of people day after day, hardly ever meeting anyone new? They gaze at the thick forest and feel just as lost as I do when I contemplate the endless grid of city streets. They try their best not to seem too affronted by the mosquitos or the perpetual damp in their clothes, but when I drive them back to town on their last day, their spirits visibly brighten—just as mine does when I get ready to leave the city and go back to the forest again. 

 

 

The late Thich Nhat Hahn wrote, “There is no path to happiness; happiness is the path.” In other words, happiness is a practice that we can work with daily, no matter where we are in the world. True happiness isn’t a thing we find when we’re finally in the ideal environment or with the ideal group of people, but can instead be the magic sauce that transforms anywhere we go into the ideal place, and anybody we’re with into the ideal person or group of people.  

That being said, it can feel so much harder to practice happiness when you’ve formed a strong opinion about something. The mind says, “How could anyone be happy here, under these circumstances?” In its ever-so-helpful way, the mind builds a case for unhappiness, and argues that case unrelentingly. When my mind does this, I can very quickly convince myself that the only place I can be happy in the entire world is the six-by-twelve porch where I drink my tea in the mornings when I’m at home in Hawaii—thirty-six square feet, on a 5,610,000,000,000,000 square foot planet! I start to wonder if maybe, just maybe, my mind is exaggerating. 

 

* 

 

When I’m feeling those waves of stress and anguish in the city, it can be easy to tell myself that any time I spend outside the valley is time I am squandering. Having been given the precious opportunity to live in such a special place, why am I wasting a single moment outside of it? By maintaining friendships and connections in the outside world, aren’t I diluting the intensity of my experience as a solitary homesteader in a wild and remote part of the earth? Maybe I should rush home, close the gate behind me, and devote myself to the worship of those misty green cliffs, letting the noisy and confusing outside world carry on without me. 

At the same time, I know from experience the importance of practicing when it isn’t easy. Whether you’re training for a marathon, learning an instrument, or trying to master the unruliness of your own mind, some of the most important learning happens when conditions aren’t ideal. In the city, happiness can be an uphill jog; it makes me sweat, and I’m not used to sweating quite so much. But just like a challenging run, I suspect that it also strengthens my heart, increases my lung capacity, and helps me correct the weaknesses that I would otherwise overlook for years at a time. 

 

 

After my predictable meltdown around the halfway point of a visit to the city, I usually find my footing again. I wean myself off the brain-frying cups of black coffee that I can’t seem to keep myself from drinking when I’m there and return to my little thermos of green tea. I find a quiet place to meditate, even if it means perching on a pile of suitcases in my friends’ cluttered basement. I go to the forest, even if it means a long bus ride or a nerve-wracking drive on the freeway. Most importantly, I remind myself to practice happiness, the same way I would practice good posture or any other skill. 

As the overwhelm subsides, I begin to appreciate the gifts of the city once more—the wide-ranging conversations, the encounters with strangers, the convenience of doing laundry in a machine, and the opportunity to fly home with a renewed appreciation for the quiet and predictability of life in a small, rural community. I’m grateful for my life in the rainforest, and for the city friends who gently insist on expanding my world, feeding my mind, and reminding me that we are all on this journey together, whether our vantage point is a misty valley or a busy street. 

As spring arrives, I wish you all a beautiful season of flowering and growth. May you all have the opportunity to practice happiness—and to find it wherever you go. 

 

Sincerely, 

Hilary T. Smith 

Senior Editor, Hierophant Publishing 

The Power of Place

Dear readers, 

 

Many years ago, long before I moved to Hawaii, I took a trip to the Big Island with my then-partner. Like many tourists, we started out by consulting a variety of guidebooks and websites, intent on hitting all the best spots and anxious not to “miss” anything. We packed snorkels, fins, and hiking boots, and made lists of beaches we wanted to see and forests we wanted to explore.  

On the third night of our trip, we drove out to the eastern side of the island, where it was still possible to watch molten lava flowing into the ocean. In the busy parking lot of the hiking trail leading out to the lava, we met an old man who had lived on the island for many decades. After chatting with him for a few minutes, he seemed to accept us as kindred spirits. With a twinkle in his eye, he told us about a second, lesser-known trail which would bring us even closer to the flowing lava. 

As a light rain began to fall, we thanked the man for his advice and set out in the direction he pointed. The hardened black lava felt strange beneath my feet—sometimes rounded and pillowy, sometimes jagged. I would later learn that the names for these two types of lava are pahoehoe and 'a'ā respectively. Here and there, wisps of steam rose up from narrow cracks in the rock. The wind picked up, and I could smell sulfur on the air. As we headed further and further away from the main trail, I felt a twinge of excitement, with a dose of guilt and worry mixed in. Was this okay? 

 

 

When the glowing orange lava came into view, my thoughts fell away, replaced by an overpowering sense of awe. Here was the planet, creating itself. The sight of it was so hypnotic I couldn’t look away, but gazed intently, worshipfully, as the radiant substance meandered slowly across the hardened lava beneath, its surface crackling as it cooled. The rain fell harder, sizzling audibly against the molten lava, and the wind picked up. I zipped up my rain jacket and pulled my hood over my ears. Although I knew this place would be special, I wasn’t prepared for the raw power I beheld. 

Then I heard a new sound: a woman chanting in Hawaiian. Looking over, I saw a small group of people standing near the other side of the flow, their bodies lit up only by the glow of the lava. Although I couldn’t understand the woman’s words, it was clear that her chant was a kind of invocation—a way of acknowledging Pele, the goddess of lava, and perhaps also of asking permission to be in her sacred home. I stood completely still, listening to the long and serious chant, and watching the lava’s slow unfurling.  

I knew, then, that even though I felt extraordinarily lucky to be there, it was also wrong. I hadn’t sought permission to be there, and hadn’t observed the protocols appropriate to that place. Like many tourists, I’d let my eagerness to have an experience outpace my understanding of the culture, the spiritual traditions, and the geography of the place I was visiting. The chanting woman had appeared as a kind of teacher, giving me a glimpse of the proper way to behave. It was now my responsibility to continue learning. 

 

 

Since then, I have learned that the singing I had heard was an oli: a Hawaiian chant usually performed by a single person, without the accompaniment of musical instruments or clapping. Although oli can serve many purposes, they are often used as a way of introducing yourself when you go to a new place—letting the land know who you are and what you intend, and perhaps asking for protection and guidance while you are there. 

Over the years I’ve lived in Hawaii, I’ve heard oli in many settings. Wandering through the valley where I live, I’ve come across people chanting oli at the spring, the beach, the taro lo’i, or beside an old grave. At the beach clean-up and habitat restoration events I attend, it’s customary for the group to pause and the leader to chant oli before the volunteers set forth with their shovels and buckets. The sound of oli is deeply moving and sometimes eerie, putting the listener in a state of deep reverence for the land on which they walk. Oli reminds me of the power of place, and the importance of bringing an attitude of respect and curiosity to the lands I visit. 

Once, a friend of mine invited me to snorkel with her in a part of the ocean I’d been too timid to visit before. Our journey would involve swimming through a narrow crack in the rocks, through a churning tunnel of white water, and out into the deep blue part of the bay. I was nervous. For one thing, I don’t like tight spaces—and I like them even less when I’m blinded by millions of tiny bubbles, wondering if I’m about to barrel straight into a rock. But even more importantly, I knew that the deeper part of the bay is where the sharks hang out, and at the time, I was very nervous about trespassing into the sharks’ home. 

But my friend was a woman in her sixties who hardly struck me as a daredevil. If she routinely took this journey, how treacherous could it really be? We got in the water, and I followed her to the edge of the coral, where a wall of lava rocks rose above the sea. My heart skipped a beat as we approached “the keyhole”—the narrow gap I’d always been too scared to swim through. She swam through first, and I followed, kicking my fins like crazy through the blinding surge. 

I swallowed a mouthful of saltwater and came up sputtering but otherwise unharmed. The ocean felt huge outside the safe confines of the inner bay. My mind began to flood with anxiety as I considered how far we were from land, and how hard we would have to swim if the currents picked up.   

“I like to sing an oli when I get here,” said my friend. “To let the sharks know I’m around.” 

She pushed her goggles onto her forehead and began to chant in a strong, confident voice. I treaded water, gazing out at the endless blue ocean. As I listened to her singing, my heart rate began to slow down. It seemed to me that her chant was truly protective—perhaps in a mystical sense, but also because it was calming, and there is nothing more important than staying calm when you’re in the ocean. I imagined the sharks could hear her respectful offering, and I felt better knowing that we weren’t rudely barging in on them, but announcing our presence at the door. I was used to feeling anxious in deep water, but for the first time, I was also overcome by a sense of peace. I felt connected to the place, as if the vibrations of my friend’s voice formed a kind of bridge or tether, uniting what was separate before. 

 

 

This May, Insight Events USA is holding the annual Gathering of the Shamans in Sedona, Arizona. Just like Hawaii, Arizona is filled with sacred sites, often referred to as vortexes. Simply being in the presence of these sites, with their red rock and deep quiet, is known to elevate the spirit and calm the mind. The Sedona Mago retreat center, where the Gathering of the Shamans is being held, is surrounded by the mountains and canyons of the Coconino National Forest, a 1.9-million-acre natural wonderland, where participants can experience starry skies and the peace that emanates from ancient land. 

I’ve never been to Arizona before, but with teachers like Rhonda McCrimmon, Jose Luis Stevens, and Linda Star Wolf in attendance, I’ve been staying up late looking at flights. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a new place—my off-grid homestead keeps me busy, and most weeks I hardly make it further than the post office, if I leave my land at all—but as I look at photos of Sedona’s red rocks, I have to admit I feel an inner stirring to go. With teachers coming from a variety of different lineages and backgrounds, the Gathering of the Shamans feels like a true meeting of minds and spiritual traditions, of the type that can be hard to find in the segmented modern world. 

I don’t know if the people indigenous to Arizona have a practice similar to Hawaii’s oli, but I do know this: the next time I visit a new place, I’ll go there as a student, not a tourist. There are lessons in the land, if we know how to listen, and skillful teachers to help us understand them, wherever we go. 

 

 

Sincerely, 

Hilary T. Smith 

Senior Editor, Hierophant Publishing 

Small Living, Big Wisdom

Dear readers,

Before I built the simple open-air hut in rural Hawaii where I cook, write, and practice music, the only structure on my land was a large, open-sided tent perched on a wooden platform. The platform was the first thing I built when I bought the land several years ago—a tiny island lifting me a precious few feet above a sea of knee-deep mud.

To live in the tent was to live in direct contact with nature. I shared the space with enormous brown hunting spiders, bright green geckos, a determined crew of mosquitos, and the occasional coqui frog whose shrill chirping could keep me up all night. Every now and then, a stray cat would decide that I was in need of a roommate, and I’d come home to find a furry intruder glaring at me from my own bed.

When it rained, I’d feel a gentle spray of mist on my face. When it stormed, I’d lie awake, worrying that an overhanging tree branch would snap off and crush me in my sleep. One night, a branch did fall, its jagged, mossy end poking right through the roof of the tent. I pushed it out, repaired the hole with duct tape, and went back to bed. Other times, I’d wake up to the voices of hunters on the trail that runs through my land, and see their flashlights in the dark. Ever so briefly, I’d wish I had a door. As it was, I didn’t even have a wall.

One night during hurricane season, there was a windstorm. As I listened to the metal tent poles creaking and groaning, the tree branches sighing, and the plastic tarp snapping back and forth with every violent gust, I felt real fear. This isn’t how people live, I thought. This isn’t a real life. I felt like a bug in a rolled-up leaf—dry, but just barely. Safe, but just barely. As I contemplated this image, my fear lifted, and I realized I was being given a great gift. How many people in our urbanized world ever get to experience what it’s like to be an insect, a bird, or some other creature who lives with only the barest protection against the elements? How many people get to live this close to the wind, the rain, and the land itself?

The precarity with which I lived was frightening sometimes, but awesome too—in the sense of putting me in direct contact with experiences of awe. Wrapped up in the windstorm, vulnerable to it, afraid of it and awed by it, I had no choice but to experience life in its rawest form.

Even after I built my hut, I continued to sleep in the tent. The one-room hut was too small to fit my bed or store my clothes, and for better or worse, I’d stopped worrying about falling branches. When I visited friends who lived in proper houses, the still indoor air felt spooky to me, and the spacious rooms devoid of life. Where were the vines twining around the legs of the furniture? Where were the spiders and geckos? Where was the mist? Now that I’d gotten used to spending twenty-four hours a day in the open air, living indoors now struck me as incredibly lonely. After reveling briefly in my friends’ comfortable couches and clean kitchens, I soon felt restless to get back to my exposed, precarious, and inconvenient home.

 

 

This summer, the island where I live was hit by a tropical storm. I stayed at a friend’s house in town while the river flooded, and when I got home, I found that the tent which had sheltered me for almost five years had finally begun to fail. As I mopped up the water, I realized that if I didn’t make a change, the wooden platform on which the tent stood would soon begin to rot, and then I would have a real problem on my hands. Maybe it was time to dismantle the tent and build a proper roof and some half-walls—not a sealed house, nothing to give one the feeling that one was indoors, but something a little sturdier, a little safer, and a lot dryer.

For a couple of months, I hemmed and hawed. I worried that building a roof would chip away at the precarity which had become precious to me. Would my newfound comfort come at the price of awe? Would it numb the empathy I felt towards those who had no choice but to live with minimal shelter, and whose precarity was far more real and pressing than the semi-optional version I valued and enjoyed? Once I had a wood-framed structure, it would only make sense to put up mosquito screens; once I started enclosing the place against insects, it would only make sense to put up a door to keep out cats and people, too. Before I knew it, I would be locking the door—and my state of vivid, uncomfortable, electrifying relationship with the land would be forever changed.

 

*

 

Spiritual traditions from around the world emphasize poverty, precarity, and voluntary simplicity as gateways to the divine. The monks in some Zen monasteries bathe in cold water, chop their own firewood, and limit themselves to simple clothing and bedding that provide the bare minimum of comfort. Shamanic peoples engage in practices like fasting, vision quests, and sweat lodges, through which they voluntarily enter a state of mild to extreme discomfort. The Benedictine monastic order of Catholics requires its members to take a vow of poverty, in response to Jesus’ advice, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”

There seems to be a consensus among world religions that too much material comfort is a barrier not only to mystical union, but also to everyday virtues like compassion, empathy, and community. When we’re just a little bit cold, hungry, lost, or broke, we’re more likely to remember the suffering of others, and act altruistically towards them. Physical discomfort can act as a whetstone to compassion, keeping us in a state of harmony instead of isolating ourselves in an echo chamber of plenty.

I often think of my land as a monastery, and its many discomforts as invaluable tools for honing equanimity, patience, humility, and love. Was I being called to patch the leaking tent and tighten the lashings, eking out its life for one more season? Or was it time to accept the “death” of this particular companion and move on?

 

 

After a second storm earlier this fall left big puddles on my bedroom floor, I made the decision to build the roof after all—and build it before hurricane season picked up in earnest. For a frenzied couple of weeks, I made trip after trip to the lumberyard, stocking up on two-by-fours and primer, and ordering metal roofing. Finally, it was time to take down the threadbare roof tarp and pull apart the hollow metal poles which held it up. For years, that tarp had been all that separated me from the wind and rain. Now, I climbed up on a stepladder and began to peel it off. After just a few tugs, the sky was revealed, and the monkeypod branches overhead. A few more tugs, and I found myself standing on a wooden platform surrounded by trees and plants, a rack of green bananas hanging just out of reach of my bed. It was delightful to stand there—to see how small my life was, compared to the life all around. Compared to the trees and cliffs, my bed looked like a toy, the wooden platform no bigger than a child’s playhouse. And I knew, suddenly, that I could let the tent go, without losing what was most precious to me. In my heart and mind, I would continue to live as a bug in a leaf, even as my body stayed dry.

As fall moves into winter, I invite you to embrace discomfort wherever you encounter it—whether that’s in a forest monastery, on a city bus, or wandering around your own neighborhood. You might just find a new sense of compassion waiting on the other side.

Readers, this November, may you all find the kind of shelter you need—and may awe find you there in all its forms.

 

            Sincerely,

            Hilary Smith

            Senior Editor, Hierophant Publishing