​Traveling from Portland to Seattle by train over the holidays, I could see a lot of homeless shelters. They were encampments under the bridges and freeway overpasses, and right along the sidewalk near the train yards.

There are a lot of homeless people everywhere, and they live in all kinds of set ups. Sometimes the homeless live near the mission, or live near the river, or camp in a nearby wilderness park. Early every morning you can see them walking toward the mission, where there’s free breakfast.

But often, the homeless people live in tents on the streets near the train tracks, in full view. It’s a new thing, in the fabric of our lives: the tents put up, in full view.

This is where people are living.

As our train rattled through Portland,  I looked out the window and saw a tent that had a little stocking set outside the door. It was raining again. It had been raining for two weeks straight. 

Merry Christmas.

Somehow, even in the situations that seem most bleak, where there is humanity... someone out there has hope.

There is always hope, wherever we are. 

Over the holidays we took the train up to Seattle to visit my mom, and it was a throwback to a much simpler, more enjoyable form of travel. It reminded me of when I was a teen, and you could go anywhere and do anything, all on your own.

There aren’t big security lines at the train. Nobody pats you down, or scans you, or x-rays your innards. The train itself is also remarkably freeing: you can eat, drink, walk around, sleep. You don’t have to sit in a sardine can, unable to move.

As we traveled through the heavily flooded areas of Oregon and Washington, it was fascinating to witness the changes in the region: the slight difference in temperature as we moved from south to north, the slight difference in environment, habitat, vibe...

The train reminded me of how we journey through life: making our way, doing our regular simple things. And then there’s a stop, and somebody gets on or gets off. And there’s people on the train we observe and talk to and notice, and these people are on the journey with us.

Then at some point, it’s time for us to get off, and continue on the journey without the souls we were traveling with. Our paths diverge.

Yet just like life, we’re together for the duration: in the same train car, a space smaller than a living room, breathing and living our lives, right next to each other, making our way to the next step.

You’ve traveled with others this way, whether or not you’ve been on a train. The people in your community, school, company. The people you run into at the grocery store, the coffee shop, the gym. Your family, your friends, the people you’re holding space with, for a few hours, for a few years, for decades.

Doing your journey together, until it’s time for the next stop. 

As most of you know, I live in the Oregon woods, and there is real nature here: lots of trees, lots of wildlife.

One afternoon, my husband and I were standing in the middle of a large meadow encircled by old oak trees, looking at how sodden the ground had become from the rain.

In particular, we were paying homage to a huge, old oak tree that had fallen during the rains. It was hundreds of feet long, sprawled on the ground, the root ball still muddy, the branches still flush with winter growth.

Suddenly, he shouted “deer” and dragged me back behind an old wooden bench, and I looked up and saw a fully antlered, eight-point stag running down the hill toward us in full charge.

He leapt over a fence, charging forward and then in the briefest moment, saw us and turned, crashing away on a new course.

We stood there cowering behind the flimsy wooden bench and breathing very hard, and after a few tentative moments we walked home, looking behind us the whole way.

Sometimes, things happen in split seconds. A split second earlier, and the stag would have charged at us in the clearing. A split second later, and the stag saw us and veered away.

Everything in the Universe conspired to make it so that we were in that clearing at that exact moment, so that we would have that split second to move; so that the stag would have that split second to change course.

Consider all the convergences that have happened in your life: those split seconds when things were going one way, and then changed.

Consider all the convergences that have happened just today.

A little while back, I got in a fight with a man.

We were in a public place, and the man was trying to show a teenage girl how to do something. The girl looked miserable, and she looked at me imploringly, as if to say “help me.” I turned in to see why she was in distress.

Immediately, I heard the man was verbally abusing her, berating her in a demeaning way. He was belligerent, loud, and very angry.

The girl started crying, in that convulsive kind of crying where you can’t stop sobbing, and I saw her wiping tears off her face.

The man kept bullying her, and then I witnessed him slap her on the leg. And then I heard him say “don’t make me lose my patience.”

I am not a brave person. I avoid conflict with people I don’t know. Everyone knows it’s foolhardy to get into altercations with strangers. And yet at that moment, something in me burst.

I marched over and, with full force, told the man if he did not stop immediately, I would call the police.
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I am not suggesting any of you put yourself in danger. But even though it was risky, even though it was outside of our conventional norms of “look away” or “don’t get involved,” I’m glad I stepped in. The party line is that we are supposed to “report to the authori- ties” and stay out of it. And of course, this is for our protection. But sometimes, there isn’t time for that.

Sometimes, abuse is happening right there in front of us, and we have to take care of it, step up and speak out, right then and there.

I feel this way about kids getting abused, especially because I have worked with so many of you who have experienced verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse in your past.

I feel this way about people getting abused for their race, or their nationality, or their religious affiliation, or their gender, or their sexual orientation, or their body shape or size or physical chal- lenge, or anything else that makes them vulnerable or disenfran- chised. I feel this way about animals getting abused. I also feel this way about nature.

We must step up together.
We must stop bullying when we see it.
We must say No More Victims in this new world we are building.

There is a time to be peaceful and loving, and there is also the moment you need to be a Spiritual Warrior.

When that time comes for you, as it did for me in this experience, I hope you will respond.

One of the most exciting things you can do, is to try something you are not good at.

So often, we are very busy working with our best skill sets: if we are good at writing, we write a lot. If we’re good at cooking, we do that. If we’re social, we always use our social skills.

Yet, there is magic that happens when we try something that we don’t know how to do: That we’re not good at, or that isn’t easy or natural for us.

What happens then, is that we must approach the new skill with beginner’s mind. Which is, of course, not all about learning the techniques of a skill, but about learning how to manage our emotions as we experience discomfort, frustration, failure.

When we were kids, we were always beginners: we threw our- selves into everything whole-heartedly, and it was always new. Over

time, we got “good” at one thing or another, and we started choos- ing that, because it was easier.

Yet, there’s something about going back to being a beginner that changes us. Makes us more curious, more open, less attached to outcome.

When we are in beginner’s mind, we are in Now. Open to ev- erything, ready to learn, ready to adapt. We’re humble, we’re pres- ent, we’re whole.

A beautiful way to be.

If you are doing a lot of meditation, try going to the gym to lift weights.

If you are doing a lot of introverted activities, try going to a big rock concert and melding with the crowd.

If you are very busy, try slowing it way, way down: cutting everything out of your scheduling, and just hanging out at home.

If you are usually very soft and feminine, trying being very assertive, tough, and masculine for a day.

The key is, to discern what your behavior and habits are most of the time, and then to do something absolutely opposite.

Try something that is not just new, but entirely different from what you normally do. Especially, try something that you are not good at: that is not natural for you, where you have to try and approach this new thing with beginner’s mind.

When we try new things, when we break out of routines and routine ways of being, we allow ourselves to expand in unprecedented ways.

We all have many parts, many ways of being. Allow yourself to inhabit more of who you really are.