The Way Is In, Then Out.

Almost every morning,
I sit on a cushion and do nothing.
Sometimes I listen to instrumental music,
sometimes a Buddhist instructor,
sometimes a Christian mystic.
It doesn’t matter the external noise —
they are all guides inward.

To meditate is not to escape;
But to exhale something divine into the cold world.

Breathing in is parting the soil—
to plant seeds of intention,
or unearth a buried relic of wisdom.
But it’s never about escaping
the disasters,
the politics,
the division,
the exhaustion of parenting—
I meditate to exhale my true breath into all of it.

What I inhale—in the early morning,
in the darkness,
before the world tells me who I am or what I should be—
I exhale back into the daylight.

And that, I think,
is the way.