So it's been a long time, it feels really nice to see you all again, pretty wild weather

scene and I talked to a lot of people and I've been in touch by email and there's kind

of primarily two gifts that people talk about of the last, you know, if you step aside

from all the inconveniences and so on and one was that of course it disrupted habits

like crazy so it kind of the crack between the worlds opens up. There's a little more of

a sense of wonder and play and the mystery of things.

How many of you found that? Yeah, it was beautiful.

And the other is that so many people talked about the kind of kindness and sense of connection

and neighborhood and showing up for each other that happened and just a real sense of community

and I'm wondering also how many of you found that that just came out? Yeah, so one of the

things I keep finding is that when people aren't afraid, when they're not caught up too

much in fear and when they sense their shared predicament, there is a sense of belonging

with each other. It just comes out, it's almost like that's the natural way that we can

feel that and then of course when we get caught up in stress, we become separate in our

separate little orbits again and that gets obscured but it's certainly beautiful when it opens

up. There is a Zen saying that I really love that summarizes the spiritual path which

is that we sit and we sweep the garden. We sit, kind of internally, get in touch and then

we sweep the garden, we take care of our life. Now for our crowd it could be we sit and

we shovel the snow, right? I'm sure you saw that coming. But the idea is that in a spiritual

path that's really an authentic and whole path, it's not just about getting in touch with

our inner life, it's not just about quieting our mind. In fact, if it's true awakening, it will

show up as a concern for other people. It will show up as a care for the world. It's not like we

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