The above recording is of me reading the essay below, if you prefer to absorb it that way. However you take it in, I hope it resonates.

Hi Friends,

I didn’t take the picture above but a few nights ago watched from my bedroom window a red sun set in the smokey skies of northern New Mexico. I was going to step outside to take it in but the air smelled like a campfire I didn’t want to breathe into my lungs. It smells that way now, too. The sun looked even redder than this picture, a flaming orb, beautiful to my eyes and disheartening to my spirit.

Parts of New Mexico are on fire. It’s a reality many of the western states these days experience at some point each year. My friends here tell me this year is already the worst they’ve ever seen, and the wildfire season doesn’t typically start until June. It’s disheartening to feel trapped indoors because the air quality is so bad, and bizarre to be living my life as normal when only forty miles away people have lost their homes to these blazes.

So I watched the red sun set the other night but couldn’t initially give myself over to the wonder I was witnessing. This beauty only exists because part of the state is burning, my mind kept repeating, as though to appreciate the scarlet sun somehow disregarded the tragedy occurring to create it. I stayed with the setting sun, heard my noisy mind but slowly gave myself over to the magnificent sky before me. Yes, this ruby sun shone only because of the smoke surrounding it, but why would I reject its existence? Why not marvel at a beauty born of tragedy? Why not make space for both?

As I was watching the sun set, I thought of the photograph of the strollers left by Polish women at the train station for Ukranian refugees arriving in Poland. This image touched billions of hearts around the world. Such compassion. An example of what our humanity can look like. The gesture, the image was as powerful as it was because it contrasted the brutality of the war taking place in Ukraine. These weren’t just any strollers for any infants; these were strollers for innocent mothers fleeing their homes with their innocent babies. Compassion feels that much more profound in the face of heartlessness.

It seems everything we feel relates to having felt something different, often times opposite. We grieve hardest for those we loved the most. We feel a special kind of aliveness as we get over being sick. We cheer most passionately for a victorious underdog. I’ve lived half my years in Michigan and can’t remember ever celebrating a rainy day because it rains often and is overcast even more often than that. In Michigan, it’s sunshine that elicits a unique joy and appreciation, virtually every time it’s sunny. Here in New Mexico, a drought-ridden state with 325 days of sunshine a year, currently consumed in areas by wildfire, I can’t imagine the joy this entire state’s population would feel should it start to rain. It looked like it might rain the other day and I felt like a kid on Christmas morning.

We live in a world of contrast. This reality is devastating on many levels. And beautiful on many more. Filled with cruelty and compassion, with greed and generosity, with sorrow and joy. It’s easy for our minds to steer in the direction of all the brutality and hardship here. It takes a bit more intention to hold space for all the beauty and love here, too.

I thought of these words, by Nikita Gill: I will not give up the flowers in my heart for stones just because the world is a hard place. The world is only hard because it needs more flower-hearted people.

I happen to love stones but appreciate her point and continue to feel the benefits of my flower heart. Aspects of this reality will always be difficult, however, no matter what kind of heart you show up with, but the more flower-hearted of us there are, the more compassion, love and acceptance we’ll bring to the hardness here. For ourselves and everyone else, too.

One hundred out of one hundred times, if given the choice, I would choose no wildfires over a radiant red sun. But this was not my choice to make. My choice, during the sunset, was to lose myself in the beauty of it, or in the devastation of what was creating it. Ultimately, I chose a combination of both. I felt the devastation, prayed for the people in the fires’ paths, mourned for our overheating planet, and then, in time, chose the beauty.

Contrast heightens everything. We know happiness because we know sorrow. We know heartbreak because we know love. We don’t typically choose pain for the hope of joy on the other side of it. But if and when the joy comes, we may as well revel in it.

Wishing you peace and acceptance within the reality of it all. And, of course, big and bigger love.

Scott

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Friends, I received the following message from one of the attendees at last night’s Online Breath & Belonging gathering:

Ok so this time it actually felt psychedelic. Like I had a whole healing journey. WHAT THE HECK SCOTT!! If I keep following you around I might end up a healed person walking around inside their own body feeling all the sparkly joy. Holy smoke! THANK YOU!!!!! Like I held myself like a mother but not me…mother love held me like a child. I love you!!

If you want to join me next Tuesday the 10th, go HERE for details. Breathwork is a game-changer, and a wild ride much of the time, too.

I’ll also be leading in-person breathwork classes in Santa Fe: Mondays from 2-3pm at Santa Fe Community Yoga Center, and Wednesdays from 6-7pm at BODY of Santa Fe. Join me live if you’re in the area.

If you feel called to support my work financially (thank you thank you thank you!), here are some ways to do it:

You can buy signed and personalized copies of my books, Just Love and/or Big Love through my website (only available in the US at this time). They make beautiful gifts for someone you love. I promise to write something lovely.

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It means so much that you’re here. Thank you!

Remember: You are beautiful. You are worthy. You are loved. As you are.

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