The Hearth Studio

16/06/2026

My DNA results came in.
Just as I suspected,
my great great grandfather
was a monarch butterfly.
Much of who I am is still
wriggling under a stone.
I am part larva, but
part hummingbird too.
There is dinosaur tar in
my bone marrow.
My golden hair sprang out
of a meadow in Palestine.
Genghis Khan is my fourth cousin,
but I didn't get his dimples.
My loins are loaded with
banyan seeds from Sri Lanka,
but I descended from Ravanna,
not Ram.
My uncle is a mastodon.
There are traces of white people
in my saliva.
3.7 billion years ago I swirled
in hydrogen dust,
dreaming of a planet overgrown
with lingams and yonis.
More recently, say 60,000 B.C.
I walked on hairy paws
across a land bridge
joining Sweden to Botswana.
I am the bastard of the sun and moon.
I can no longer hide my heritage of
raindrops and cougar s**t.
My mud was molded with your grandmother's tears.
I was the brother
who marched you to the sea
and sold you.
I was the merchant from Savannah
and the cargo of blackness.
I was the chain.
Admit it, you have wings,
vast and crystal,
like mine, like mine.
You have sweat, dark and salty,
like mine, like mine.
You have secrets silently
singing in your blood,
like mine, like mine.
Don't pretend that earth
is not one family.
Don't pretend we never hung
from the same branch.
Don't pretend we do not ripen
on each other's breath.
Don't pretend we didn't
come here to forgive.

Poem "Ancestry" by Fred LaMotte

10/06/2026

Between the stimulus and the response is a space. In that space is our freedom.
- Viktor Frankl

10/06/2026

The wisdom and compassion of Thich Nhat Hanh 🙏🏽

08/06/2026

It’s perfectly normal to want happiness.
Who wouldn’t want that?!

Yet this simple cartoon points to the core of this very human problem.

Paradoxically, it is the “wanting” itself that keeps us dissatisfied and not happy. Wanting is a state of lack. It is a rejection of the present moment, while searching for some other moment or reality, some imagined future state. “When I have this or that, I will be happy.”

Grasping, desiring, wanting - these energies pull us out of this sacred moment.

Many spiritual teachings, from Buddhism to “The Secret”, from sufism to the Christian mystics, highlight this paradox.

Compare the following quotes:

“Troubled by questions all my life, like a mad man I have been knocking at the door. It opened! I had been knocking from inside.” - Rumi

“In order to arrive at pleasure in everything
Desire to have pleasure in nothing.
In order to arrive at possessing everything,
Desire to possess nothing.
In order to arrive at being everything
Desire to be nothing.
In order to arrive at knowing everything,
Desire to know nothing.” - St John of the cross.

The bird of paradise lands only on the hand that does not grasp. - zen proverb

It’s like DESIRE is the problem that pushes away what we desire. What a very human dilemma!

Your demands that life give you what you desire only push them further away.

Great sages and teachings like those above have given us a way out of this dilemma.

Surrender your wanting, grasping desire for things to be different on the altar of the present moment.

If you are filled with unhappiness, then be with that unhappiness. Hold it and comfort it, like a mother with a crying child.

In this moment, do not try to be what you are not.

Instead, come home to yourself in this moment, and be more fully with whatever is here and now. Allow your unhappiness to breathe, and say to it: “hello my darling, I am here for you, I will take care of you.”

Transmute your grasping desire into a simple preference, rather than a demand or an expectation.

Jesus spoke of a “peace that passes understanding”. It’s possible to be at peace, in simple and open joy, without grabbing at our objects of desire.

Then truly, sometimes when we least expect it, the bird of paradise will land on our open hand.

18/05/2026

The great paradox.

16/05/2026

This simple picture says it all.

Our minds and bodies are in different places.

This is considered normal!
No wonder we experience such dissatisfaction and agitation.
We are out of synch with ourselves.

Our physical energetic body exists in the here and now.
It can’t be anywhere else.

But our mind is frequently far far away.

Bring mind and body into alignment, and you will be living the Tao. This is living all of life more deeply, even the bits you would not have chosen.

Learning to live more and more from this place, will make us whole.

More at peace.

And powerful in ways we could not have imagined.

“To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.”
- Lao Tzu

16/05/2026

13/05/2026

Please note change of dates

06/05/2026

Tension, uncertainty, and outright conflict can exist between countries, between people, and within ourselves.

Catastrophic worries about the future, or regret or longing for a past that is already gone - these are mental movies that often dominate our minds.

“What if…?” Or “I wish I hadn’t….” scenarios pull us away from the only thing we have any control over, the only time that we are actually alive: this present moment.

In difficult times, we need even more to anchor ourselves in our own life, in our body, in our moment to moment actions.

Mindfulness teaches us how to do this.

Mindfulness is not a religion or dogma.

Mindfulness is a skill, a practice, a tool for bringing ourselves home to the real life that we actually have.

The tree that is deeply rooted in the earth, will hold strong when the storms come.

For more info:

https://songoftheancients.com/mindfulness-meditation/

11/03/2026

"Happiness depends first of all on having the deep desire for happiness, and then on having a spiritual path to follow. Every day, do some little thing on that path, and you will be happy. Don’t try to do big things. Do small things to make yourself happier, to make your friends happier. When you cook a dish or clear the table, do it beautifully, for yourself and for the people around you. You can start right away."
-Thich Nhat Hanh (Fidelity)