Timeless and weathering vessel

Our bodies are our vessels. These vessels hold not only tissue and bone, but thoughts, tears, patterns, and dreams.  The life we live creates the weathering recorded by our vessels.  The sun, the rain, the wind, and ice all create their own patterns and effect our vessels in many ways.  We hear the word tempering and wonder how can we temper our human form?

Tempering and acclimating our vessel is something we learn to do for and with ourselves.  Many of us wake after weathering many storms and sitting through the heat and stifling humid circumstances to find our vessel cracked, warped, dried out, faded in color, and most of all we cannot see our grains as clearly. Who are we? Can we even identify with this vessel that has carried everything we are, shows everything we are and have been?  

You are the wooden bowl.  You come from the finest wood you have ever seen, smelled, and sat beneath.  The tree that you are made from is your most favorite tree.  You are the bowl and yet you hold the bowl at the same time.  Take a look at.  How long has it sat in the sun becoming faded? How many times have you left your bowl outside during the storm?  What waters has it held and from where? Where has your vessel cracked? Now take your bowl in your hands and rub your thumb on it.  Let the oils absorb in to the grain of your vessel.  Wipe off the dust and old matter that does not belong there anymore.  Notice the dust and grim and delicious particles left behind by the feasts and teas, and sacred resins your bowl has held.  Begin to wipe all of it away, the soft and the harsh.  Shine your bowl.  Uncover your grain.  See it shine.  Is it like cherry wood or knotty pine?  Is it dark like walnut or aromatic like cedar? It is your bowl, your vessel and it has held every tear and wish you have ever had.  Can you use your own tears to fill and shine your own bowl? Can you see what is right there under the weathering?

Our families, friends, jobs, and lovers all have a weathering effect on our vessels.  Some may leave us feeling dull and some may leave us glowing. 

All of our vessels weather.  Sometimes a good friend helps us remember we have a grain and not just a stain other people's finger prints left on us. Our smell, our weight, our color is our own. Sometimes a massage, or yoga session, or seminar revitalizes us and creates a glow that seems to come from within, encompassing all we have ever experienced.  And we begin again to hold the water or the elixir of life again.  We begin to retain enough to hold our grains together, to mend our cracks. 

if we are the ones providing the massage, counsel or yoga session, it can be disheartening to see a client dry up, crack and dull by their next session.  We wonder why they would choose to endure that sort of weathering.  We wonder why we should work so hard on our own vessels and sacrifice that sacred anointing oil to others when we have just enough for ourselves. Because we are all learning to care for our vessels and to admire and appreciate the weathering as a part of one another's character.  The sacred oil that we use to uncover and fill our bowls comes from within ourselves.  Initially we may have to be reminded and filled with the sacred oil that someone else has spent their time cultivating to remind us that we have it too. 

Weathering is normal and our character is what attracts our greatest destiny to us by exposing our grain! 

Be brave enough to be vulnerable. Be brave enough to look at your own weathering.  Be brave and remember the essence of yourself you have been cultivating, carrying, and adding to your whole life. Be brave my friends and learn to temper your vessel.  There is much life ahead of us and our vessels are all we have. Uncover yourself, find your grain, and shine again. And oh, how  you will shine again!