New On Dangerous Harvests

I can imagine that many of you have noticed the color changes on the blog. A regular reader wrote me a few weeks ago, requesting that I change the color scheme because she was having a hard time reading the old one on her computer screen. Looking at it, I realized that maybe more of you might also be having trouble, especially if reading it from a battery run computer not currently plugged in. Or perhaps on a phone. In any event, I changed the colors to the shades of green you saw last week. And then received some more feedback on those changes, which led to the current blue/green approach. Hopefully, this works better for most of you.

In addition, after all of this talk about money and writing, I decided to add a "donations" button to the blog (see sidebar). I have always felt like Dangerous Harvests is an offering to my readers, something that allows me to share a bit about my spiritual life and views, and also to have excellent conversations with those readers who choose to do so. In the past, I stood against the idea of making income off the work I'm doing here, for a variety of reasons.

As the blog has evolved, not only has it become a part of my spiritual practice, but it has also helped me to extend the notion of sangha, or community beyond the brick and mortar and beyond the local. In addition, as my own understanding of sangha has evolved over the past few years, in great part due to my role as Board president of Clouds in Water - my "home" zen center - I have realized that interdependence also includes offering opportunities for others to give back in the ways that they can. Discussions we have had on our board about sangha finances have led to discovering creative ways to open doors to giving back to the community. Giving time. Giving material items of need. Giving mutual support. And giving money. All of these, and more have come up over the past few years, and have slowly helped reshape my own relationship to giving and receiving.

And so, I'm offering you, my readers, the opportunity to support my work financially through the donation button. I do so without any expectations really. If you feel moved to give a little financial donation, great! If not, no worries. I fully intend to continue writing as I have been, as this blog continues to benefit me in many ways. However, it just seemed time to recognize that it's ok to have a donations ask on the blog, and that doing so doesn't diminish anything being done here.

Thank you to all who have supported this blog through reading, commenting, and offering other means of support as well. It's all part of sangha - of sharing community together, and growing along the way. Bows.

* Photo above is from my garden. Enjoy!