I'm in a delightful creative process writing group that nourishes me on all levels. And tonight I wrote something there and I just feel like posting it.

The prompt was "Waking Up."

Damn. I just keep thinking in spiritual metaphors. I am waking up to something bigger inside me or is it around me--by bigger I'm not even sure what I mean, I only notice its symptoms, like the way kindness moves me to my core--simple actions, like the suspicious-looking 7-11 clerk providing a free cup of water to the mentally handicapped fellow who stumbled in. Why does this stuff send a little painful charge across my heart? Perhaps it is the pain that precedes relief.

I'm seeking an understanding of what my heart is trying to say, what happens for me in that moment when kindness passes perhaps unexpectedly between two people. Why does it make me want to crumple to my knees? Is it shock or disbelief? Is it gratitude? People were nice enough to me, weren't they?

Oh wait, I just got it, the answer here in my solar plexus...it isn't just any and all kindness that shakes me, it's kindness enacted on the vulnerable, the sensitive, the underdog. Every time my own deeply tender little self sees another deeply tender little self receive care, it trusts just a little bit more in the world.

Today I read an article about an organization that takes in abandoned rabbits and today they were nursing a bunny that had been cruelly set alight by teenagers over the weekend. At first I felt rage as the woman quoted said that the bunny, who's ears had almost melted and whose top layer of fur had crusted off, had lost faith in humans. I wanted to burn those kids at first! But just now I'm thinking that in some way they were attempting to burn their own rabbit-like vulnerability out of themselves, to not feel that part of us that is so very true and real, and without its own protection, a wide-eyed innocent we bring into the world with us.

All I know is that the more I wake up to the purpose of my soul, the more my own wounded creature learns to trust in humanity again, a little bit.