God! Dog! Palindrome!

 There are four stages to life: youth, middle-age, old age, and "You look great!"                                     Unknown (but pretty goddam funny)

You do enough.  You have enough.  You ARE enough.

You are not alone.  You are loved unconditionally.  You are supported.  You are strong.  You are ENOUGH.

One meditation visualization that I hear often and just as often forget is to imagine that there are roots emanating from the bottoms of my feet and entering the ground and traveling through every bit of this earth and intermingling with the roots of every other person, connecting me with all of them.

I'll toss in this ChatGPT summary of animism, a topic I've investigated in the past and one that continues to fascinate me even though I'm not really sure how to incorporate it into my own personal, learned and installed root system:

Animism is the belief that spirits, souls, or a living essence exist not only in humans but also in animals, plants, natural features, and sometimes objects such as rivers, mountains, rocks, or even tools.

Key ideas of animism include:

• Nature is alive and spiritually significant.
• Humans are part of a larger community that includes animals, plants, and other beings.
• Relationships with these beings often involve respect and reciprocity.

Animism is found in many Indigenous and traditional cultures around the world, including among some Native American, African, Australian Aboriginal, and Asian peoples.  It is often considered one of the oldest forms of religious belief.

Every time we travel we pick up a few rocks from wherever we end up.  I'm assuming I'm not supposed to do this but as with many things I'm not supposed to do I do it anyway, partially because I have a great deal of respect for rocks - they're amazing things that have been around for a long time - and partially because it connects me to an old friend from high school who was also a rock guy.  And with SuperK's geologist brother who knew a lot more about rocks than I'll ever know and who passed this love on to his sister who passed it on to me, a gift I'm deeply grateful for.

Rocks!

I felt the presence of The Divine as deeply as I've ever experienced during our trip to Antarctica.  Man, that place got into my bones.  Man, that was a beautiful place.  God - or Dog - was oozing out of that place.

When we got back from our last trip the Mexican rescue dog who lives next door and who loves me with a love I cannot fathom glimpsed me for the first time since our return.  She lost it.  She looked like a demon possessed.  She was bouncing and thrashing around so much that she lost her balance and fell heavily on her side - it looked like it hurt to me - but she just hopped up and continued to thrash.  You tell me there's nothing divine in that?  You tell me that isn't the essence of love distilled?

God!  Dog!  You notice anything similar there!?!