Tomatoes, onion and garlic from the garden, along with a few Penzeys spices, made a nice sauce for an impromptu chili relleno casserole for lunch yesterday.

The roasted poblano chilis came from the Delta farmers’ market where I stopped last week. Five dollars for a bag of roasted chilis and five more for four big fresh peppers and two tomatoes.

I based it on the Chili Pepper Madness recipe, and added a splash of milk to the eggs based on some other recipes. So simple, so delicious!

Last night I slipped out of a zoom meeting for a few minutes to catch the full moon rising. It occurred to me that this could be the last October full moon I’ll ever see. Not to be morbid, but just realistic. Anything can happen at any time. Age doesn’t guarantee longevity, nor does genetics, nor anything else.

It also occurred to me that grief is an equally valid response to life as gratitude. Gratitude and grief go hand in hand. I attended a webinar this afternoon on how to help grieving people. It was perfect timing. I’d been thinking about grief a lot this past week, after helping a dear friend navigate a sudden, freak death in her family.

There’s also the grief that I’ve felt since childhood about the madness of humans destroying the planet, and now the exacerbating grief of a regime that’s trying to turn back time in all the wrong ways while accelerating the unbridled pillaging of the natural world for corporate profit. I’m grateful for meditation, for mindful introspection, for compassionate and wise teachers from many traditions around the world available to any of us with a few keystrokes. I’m grateful for sleep, for friendships, for the moon and the sun, for water, wild birds, golden leaves, an open heart, for the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows of being human, and for this breath.