Sometimes I’m asked about a certain line.
Where is the line between my needs and my family’s needs?
Where is the line between time away and time at home?
Where is the line between doing too much and not doing enough?
Where is the line between taking care of myself and taking care of everyone else?
Where is the line between inside and outside?
Between you and me?
Then and now?
Happy and sad?
Laughter and tears?
And I respond:
There is no line.
Look up, look around, see what needs to be done. There is no line, no wall, no gate, no limit, no barrier, no lock or key, and no one stopping you, except that one who has stopped to look for a line.
I’ve trained a bluejay, out of my own delight, to perch like a cat outside my door.
On Sunday evening, my daughter looked up from the sofa and told me she was going to write a blog post. Seeing it later, I wondered if she was reading my mind. She was no doubt reading her own mind, consoling that restless uncertainty that surfaces in the spring. Maybe the bunny brings us fluff to buffer the bumps ahead: the transitions, the spurts, the sudden endings and the fits. Things are changing all around and in-between us, and I can scarcely steal a kiss. I smiled when I saw how she straddles her precarious age, savoring one piece of kiddie candy before wrapping herself in the shiny gloss she lets us see.
Some truths are self-evident. Money can’t buy happiness. Appearances don’t matter. You can’t tempt me with a mindless shopping spree. So it’s easy for me to say no when my 11-year-old daughter resumes a noxious whine for skinny jeans or a bazillionth pair of dimestore earrings. I’m not the mom who shops. I’m the mom with the $12 haircut, wearing the 10-year-old sweater, in the same faded khakis you saw me wearing yesterday. I am the one with a half-empty closet, a near-empty wallet, and a brand of religious devotion that keeps them that way. I’m a Buddhist priest. I’m not the mom at the mall.
Some of the most profound truths come from the simplest minds and mouths.
If you have a moment to spare this weekend, please cycle back to the Huffington Post and catch my first blog post there: 
You might think I’m using a metaphor when I say that my spiritual practice is doing the laundry. Metaphor or not, laundry is the practice of seeing things as they are. Take a look at how to go from the hamper to happiness in eight steps.
