It was a rainy Christmas Eve as we made our way through a crowded church toward a space just large enough to seat my family—my mom and dad, my younger siblings, and our Nana. We had moved to the Midwest while I was in middle school, and my Nana had come to visit from California. She went to daily mass and had already acquainted herself with the people and the priest at our “potato chip church.” We called it that because the roof was shaped like a Pringle. She was also a deeply spiritual woman in her own way, beyond the church. So, there we were, in our best Christmas clothes.
The Mass moves through rhythm, participation, and order—standing, kneeling, reading, responding, praying, singing. There is a moment when the people are invited to share the sign of peace with their neighbors. They usually hug their families first, then turn around and shake hands with one or two strangers, saying, Peace be with you. It is meant to be open and friendly. And sometimes it is, but often it is sterile. When it is done, everyone returns to stillness, facing forward, and waits for the priest to begin again.
In this instance, the priest was unable to continue.
My Nana, from her place of lived ritual, had left our pew to share peace with more people.
Why stop at two?
She was hugging everyone—and they received it. The priest was visibly flustered, and my dad was rolling his eyes while laughing under his breath. At first, we children sat wide-eyed, unsure what was happening. But by the time she reached the front of the church, near the altar, we were laughing.
After standing there a while, unsure how to regain control, the priest finally addressed my Nana by name and asked her to return to her seat.
She hugged a few more people on her way back.
He was trying to hold the structure and continuity of ritual, while she, holding a deeper reverence, had entered the field of living ritual. He was faced with continuing the process around her—the living essence of love and relationship.
If you had received a hug from her that day, you would have experienced the luminous coherence beaming from her eyes.
I did not understand at the time what I was actually witnessing.
But through my own small human movements, I was recently reminded that I know this.
It lives in me—this atmosphere of love and laughter, where play is normal, touch is natural, and belonging is assumed.
A few days ago, my son was at our home working on his new business before heading to an appointment.
I watched him make a little breakfast and refill his coffee, and I felt glad there was enough for him.
He asked about his dad’s new venture and said,
“It is good to be excited for someone.”
I replied,
“Yes, but aren’t you excited for yourself?”
He said,
“I am choosing a vortex thought.”
I paused, then said,
“Well, I am excited for you—and that is a vortex thought.”
He smiled, and we both laughed.
A moment later, after I had gone back to my project in my creative space, he came upstairs to ask my opinion. I gave it happily.
Instead of going back downstairs, he sat in a chair near my space—dog nearby—and remained quietly working in the atmosphere that had just been held open for him.
When his dad came into the kitchen a little later, my son, the dog, and I all found our way there. We shared space, our work, more coffee, a little more breakfast—
and a lot more laughter.
Lately, I’ve been remembering that what nourished me most deeply growing up was not perfection, but atmosphere.
And this moment with my son touched something old and familiar in me—a way of holding life beyond survival mode, in playfulness, ease, laughter, and trust.
I wanted to write about the field from within which everything arises and is held in relationship—the pre-form state of thought, substrates, particles, the nature of reality itself.
But my Nana arrived to remind me of something deeper.
The field is not only perceived in mystical states.
It is transmitted through how people feed one another, laugh together, touch, welcome, hold uncertainty—how they keep life circulating through relationship.
Family meals.
Gatherings.
Warmth.
The relational atmospheres we create around one another—these are not small things.
They are the deeply human expression of cosmology, field theory, and coherence.
Where the architecture becomes lived.
No longer abstract.
No longer distant.
But embodied in ordinary moments that carry extraordinary coherence.
It is a human being responding directly to the living essence in others, without self-consciousness.
It is doctrine, ritual, structure—pausing around the reality of living love moving through the room.
What my soul recognized before my mind understood was this:
the continuity of life force moving through relationship.
A field we participate in shaping in every small human exchange.
It invites us to play.
Warmth, hospitality, humor, touch—these are what widen the field, allowing others to enter into relationship.
I saw it in my Nana, in the way she moved through the world, circulating peace.
She fed the field.
I saw it in my son—choosing his vortex thought, reorganizing the atmosphere in a moment of shared laughter.
And I recognize it in myself, where coherence shifts the field from scarcity to continuity, allowing the atmosphere to become breathable again.
This way of living is not lost.
The field moves toward life, toward relationship, toward embodiment—through ordinary moments.
It lives through people who hold atmospheres of shared aliveness, who enter the field directly and open it—
not through perfect lives,
but through true human expression.
And when you feel it, you will know.
Not because it is explained, but because something in you recognizes it.
Someone still does know how to love.
