I thought I'd begin by letting you know that a few weeks ago I was walking with a very

dear friend of mine by the river and she was telling me some of the difficult issues

going through but she was speaking of them quite cheerfully and then she kind of showed

me her necklace and the necklace said no mud, no lotus. Now if you know a little bit

about the symbology of the lotus, the lotus roots in the mud and it's nourished by the

mud and it blossoms into this beauty that in Buddhism and in some of the other Asian

religions symbolizes the awakening of our heart and mind. And the understanding here

is that sometimes one friend of mine describes it as manure for bodhi, bodhi being awakening

that we awaken not because we manage to sidestep the difficulties but because of the quality

of presence that we bring when the inevitable staff of life appears. So tonight this will

be our exploration, no mud, no lotus. And I think that for most of us we know that it's

the times in our life those seasons when we really encounter something very very difficult

and it might be a major loss of some sort, a big relational conflict, something with

our health, something very painful occurring for someone we love.

But those are the times that require that we dig deeper into our reservoir of resources

and spirit. We discover more of our strength and of our of our depths. And for most of us,

there are times that we get caught in a reactivity but when we really let ourselves dive deep we

discover resilience. We discover a quality of soulfulness or of strength. And I love the way

Pemetroden describes this path. And she said it's not like we're climbing up a mountain to get

some pinnacle of light but it's more invert the mountain. It's more that we're going down, down,

into the mud and the realness and the vulnerability down and down until we find at the bottom and we're

going together holding hands this love that will not die. That when we root deep into the mud with

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