Blessed Be the Dog That Takes You for a Fall Walk
/ Rebecca AirmetBy Marcia Appel — Last Updated: October 11, 2024
No amount of pleading on my part
Stopped your brown eyes from begging on your part.
So, jeans pulled over striped cotton pajama bottoms
And downy jacket enfolding my hunched shoulders,
We stepped out into the predawn chill.
The leash, slipped lightly over my wrist and linked
Tightly to your collar,
Drew us mystically together,
The yin/yang obvious to passersby -
You pulling, me dragging.
Three blocks into the woods,
You stopped at a thicket of evergreens,
Pushed your spotted nose into the branches,
And then looked back
As if to say, “Why not you, too?”
I stopped resisting you then.
My face leaned full into the misty, fragrant spruce,
Encircled by golden pampas grass,
Where loamy autumn smells flowed over me
With the hint of Christmas yet to come adding zest.
You leaned companionably against my legs then,
Reminding me, once again,
Of the simple joys you give each day.
Snowflakes, winter nights, and the ache for perfection become entry points into a meditation on mystery and magic in everyday life. Drawing on memory, mindfulness, and art, Marcia invites readers to loosen their grip on perfection and fear to rediscover peace and wonder.
What if starting the new year didn’t require resolutions—or guilt—but curiosity and compassion? This month, Marcia offers a gentler approach to starting the year, reimaging intentions through movement, mindfulness, and even a few unexpectedly athletic household chores.
The clock may have changed, but our bodies haven’t caught up. As we stumble through the time warp into the holidays, it’s the perfect moment to pause, breathe, and remember: wellness isn’t seasonal — it’s essential.
What are the ingredients of a brave, peaceful, and meaningful life? Marcia explores a lesson from her most recent retreat to Greece, along with sharing beautiful images from the trip.
What if…? In this moving reflection, Marcia explores the powerful idea that our rejected paths hold as much weight as the ones we walk. She invites us to look at our own life stories not with longing for what might have been, but with deep gratitude for what is.
There are so many ways to fall... This month, Marcia explores the crucial importance of falling in love with life, as the season of fall approaches…
July finds beach life in full swing in Minnesota, and nothing says summer more than a book on the beach. Check out seven of Marcia’s top recommendations for your beach reading list this summer.
What should we do when the bad stuff in our lives piles up? Is there are way to get out of the continuous loop of stress and rumination? One way is to recognize abundance in our lives.
Travel changes you. When you travel, you grow. You learn to listen. You become a citizen of the world. Join Marcia as she recounts her travels, both personal and with Green Lotus, and extends an invitation to you to travel with us
If you’re confronting grief, here is a first-aid love offering for you. When it hits you, remember that grief is normal, fully human, and manageable. When it surprises you, even after many years, remember the Buddha’s advice about all emotions and feelings that come calling: Open your door and invite them in for tea and visit with them with kindness.
A palette of bright yellow and coral; riotous reds, oranges, and purples. Vibrant prints and tropical colors form one word in my mind: Spring! And Knowing spring stands just around the corner helps to ease some of our stress…
The storm clouds blew in with so little warning that there was no time to run, no time to hide. They gathered, small at first, in a corner of my mind, unnoticed and therefore unattended to. As I sought a safe space internally, none could be found, and I took refuge in family and friends.
We hold so tightly to the word “resolute” and its direct descendant, “resolution”. We took this lovely word with its Latin footprints, held it hostage, and morphed it into something that tends toward a kind of rigidity and judgment that often results in disappointment and feelings of failure.
When times become troubled, when loneliness descends, when weariness seeps into the bones, when the load feels too heavy, even when we wish to have fun and adventure, the comfort and joy of community beckons…
I sat in my car on the side of the road. Cars, vans, motorcycles, and trucks whizzed past me as I sat stuck in place. In my fog, I finally picked up my cell phone and called the friend who knows me best. “I’m sitting on the side of the Crosstown unable to move,” I managed to say through choked tears. “I’ll be right there,” she said.
What is your favorite part of fall? Marcia takes you on a crisp fall walk with her beloved pup...
The best gift you can give yourself when traveling with a group is time on your own. It is when you take yourself on a stroll – wandering, chatting, daring to get lost – that insight and momentary friendships sometimes appear. Zing goes your heart when you do.
I loved Anna DeBoer with all my heart. She taught me amazing things, and when she died, she left me her cherished cuckoo clock. Now I wonder if Anna DeBoer would have been vilified for some of her ways. When we start to see “the other”, sit in fear, hide in darkness, and forget that we all bleed red, we all lose.
Joy is often effervescent - like champagne or soap bubbles. Contentment is grounded, solid, steady. It is beyond loneliness and fear, beyond even old age…
The minute I walked through the glass double doors, I felt a current of connection flow through my body.
What happens if the ones you love don’t connect with self and with another as deeply as you do or as you hoped they would? How do you love the one(s) you’re with then?
I carefully peeled the orange, and as I placed the segments on a plate, a revelation hit me: “Ahh, this is how my life is - a whole lived in segments…”
Lately, I’ve been fighting off feelings of disappointment. It’s the one emotion most difficult for me to process. How about you?
Earlier this month, I led a training in Yoga Nidra. My heart cracked open. Emotions and feelings flowed. What a gift for us all, students and teachers alike. In sharing our inner life and our hearts’ deepest longings, we find equality.
Hey, God, are you there? It’s me, Marcia. Usually, as I sit on my cushion, I listen for and to you. As you know, sometimes, I call you God, other times Universe. Other times, Goddess. In a long life with you, I learned you hear and answer to many names. I know you’re there.
At this time of the year, we often feel tender: tender toward other people, tender toward the natural world and all its creatures, tender toward life itself, tender perhaps even toward ourselves. Images both sweet, like a dog and cat sleeping together, and horrifying, like the pain and suffering borne by innocent civilians on both sides of a war, elicit tender thoughts.
The headline for this soul-baring sounds faintly geopolitical and sinister. It’s as though Hercule Poirot stands on deck to solve a great mystery. This situation requires no famous investigator, however. What is unfolding is the normal flow of the sweet river of life and a happy, joyous bend in it. I can’t wait to tell you this long-held secret.
This thought plagues me in a time of impersonality. We sit in offices in our private homes, alone or on endless Zoom meetings that I overhear from my home’s lower level when my children or friends stay over. Oh, yes, they see faces. The sharing, though, is all business…
With Barbie, there emerged a more complicated relationship. She didn’t look like anything I witnessed in the strong flesh-and-blood women around me, and it’s only by some miracle that I didn’t start to body-shame myself. I know many others did in the years before we talked about concepts like the male gaze and how it distorts the way women view themselves. This sets impossible standards that maim and warp and cause real illnesses in both men and women and their relationships, however they come together. Especially in the first decade of Barbie’s existence, her white, white world left out everyone else, which matched reality, until the great movements of the late ‘60s and ‘70s caused Mattel, Barbie’s corporate owner, to succumb to the pressure to “show dolls more like me and my daughter”. I’ll get back to that in a minute.