A new kind of bliss for me.

Listening to Dar Williams' The Honesty Room. Spreading the never-washed child's quilt that my grandma made and laying my gummy-grinned daughter on it.

Then, just to keep things real, Arwen spits up, grabs my hair, and tries to claw my eyeball out.

It's still bliss.

She's trying to hold the edges of books now. This is an important milestone that I've never heard mentioned in anything written about babies. First, holding books, then learning to read ... then, mentally traveling the world!

This morning we walked outside, and we watched a flock of birds fluttering about and chittering, trying to prepare for the winter storm coming tonight. Arwen was rapt.

I have plans for 2010. Actual resolutions for once, because I figure I've got this Will and maybe I ought to use it to make the world a slightly better place. So many little things converging in my life, clustering in my mind.

I want to do a variation of The Compact. Up til now my consumer life has been pretty deliberate, but I'd like to make an official learning experiment out of it.

I also want to get serious about Buddhist studies. For so long I've had a Buddhist viewpoint but some aspects I meant to pursue have been lost in fits and starts, surface skimming. It is obvious to me. The baby's bedtime affects my ability to attend classes at Rissho Kosei Kai, but there are other possibilities that are unfolding day to day. I intend to pay more attention.

So many little nudges this year, saying: 'Hey, you know, if you really want to change the world start with yourself.' Lately I've been drawn to Engaged Buddhism. For years I've been spiraling around it.

I can do way better than I have been. I have the desire to do so and the energy to spare.

Just when it has seemed I couldn't bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving

someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.

I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn't leave a stain,
no sweetness that's ever sufficiently sweet . . .

Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low

and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief

until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don't care

where it's been, or what bitter road
it's traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.

~ Stephen Dunn, "Sweetness"

... Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

~ Theodore Roethke

This made me smile.

Reading The Four Noble Truths.

Strangely enough, so many tiny lessons lately regarding intolerance, hate, and compassion.