reciprocity: “… You know, the oxygen we need to breathe is precisely what all the green plants around us are breathing out. So what the plants breathe out, all of us are breathing in. And then what we breathe out is just what all those plants need to breathe in.” ~ Joanna Macy
“… remains astonishing to me even today—reciprocity: a magic pulse of interspecies generosity quietly unfurling itself in the depths of the present moment, hidden at the heart of all our experience …” ~ David Abram
{Both quotes from A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time}
We are deeply grateful to the entire Stillness Speaks community for their support and interest in this labor of love … and we wish all of you …
A Very Happy New Year!
May it bring ever deepening peace and contentment in every regard!
Sanjiv & Cherie
As the slow, sleepy, soft morning of this 1st day of 2026 was unfolding … reciprocity revealed itself — magically and quite synchronistically …
Living Reciprocity …
“… It is here in the improvisational thick of the Real, that we must practice our spiritual work …” ~ David Abram
The new year does not arrive somewhere else — it meets us right here … in the body already breathing … in the world already moving … in the quiet exchange we rarely stop to notice.
Each inhalation is a receiving; each exhalation, a giving back. Nothing about this moment is private.
Even before we turn inward, we are already in relationship — with air, with trees, with light, with one another.
Presence, it turns out, is not something we step into later. It is the living reciprocity we are already part of, moment by moment.
If we listen closely, presence is not still in the way we imagine. It moves. It circulates. It passes between us and the world in an unbroken exchange — light arriving, breath entering, breath leaving.
What we call awareness is already a meeting point, where inside and outside are no longer clear boundaries but gestures of response. In this way, being here is less about holding attention inward, and more about belonging to a rhythm that is always underway.
There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.
~ Rumi
Breath, you invisible poem!
Pure, continuous exchange
with all that is, flow and counterflow
where rhythmically I come to be.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
What these lines are pointing to is not metaphor but practice … breath itself becomes the teacher: a continual receiving and offering, inseparable from the living world that sustains it.
This is the heart of what Joanna Macy has long invited us to notice—not awareness as a turning away from life, but as a deepening participation in it.
When we attend to this exchange, practice is no longer something we do in isolation; it unfolds within the very reciprocity that is already carrying us, moment by moment, breath by breath.
…
And perhaps this is enough for today: to notice the exchange already underway, to feel how each breath belongs not just to us, but to the living world that offers it and receives it back.
Practice need not be added to this moment. It is already happening—here, in the real—whenever we are willing to meet what is given … and respond in kind.
May you be safe and well.
Most likely, we’ll be exploring Joanna’s book, A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time, as part of our substantive previews via the Shambhala Publication series – made possible by Shambhala Publications generosity. This post is inspired by this book – and one of the key “themes” of her book might even form the “seed anchor” for Stillness Speaks’ content in 2026 … so stay tuned …
Opening quote and David Abram’s quote in the preamble, and the Rilke stanza from A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time, Edited by Stephanie Kaza By Joanna Macy.
Rumi excerpt from The Essential Rumi, Translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne.
Images (edited): 1 & Featured) Morning at Yelnya swamp by mvw@tut.by. 1) purchased from Depositphotos. All are for use only on our website/social channels (these images are not permitted to be shared separate from this post).
