Pulling threads
Notes and news from the present moment, on its swift way to becoming past.
New Year Greetings
Writing to you from under a blue, blue sky, I send happy good wishes for the New Year — and for the new quarter-century! May all your transitions be smooth and landings soft.
and so soon new things come
In the transition from summer to autumn, learning from bardo practice … preparing for Autumn equinoxe, a new yoga schedule and a NEW meditation class
Winter Solstice
I have added a Winter Solstice meditation session to the calendar, on Tuesday, December 21, 2021. Join us! Also coming soon — the end of year mini-retreat — and in January, our weekly Winter meditation session is open for signup.
Poiesis
The practices I have been gathering and that I share when teaching, are things I experience as methods of “homecoming” — coming to rest in being, whole. “Creative” or not, I believe we all, by the fact of living, are in the process of bringing forth what has not before been expressed, what has not before been realized. This is poeisis.
A Living Being, Feeling the Sun
I am working on a book that follows the lives of several families in the early 1900s, in a very rugged and remote part of the west coast. I have been reading widely many writers from that time period, to understand more deeply how that literature depicted it’s own time, to get a feel for how people understood the historical moment from within it. One of the writer’s I have come to read in this quest is Willa Cather, and her story of an orphaned settler boy. She writes this 10-year-old character with great tenderness, and through him, in two brief passages, Cather delivers a profound teaching that sounds like buddhist or yog philosophy to me.
Welcome Summer Retreat
When we sit together, we practice resting into our experience.
We practice sharing, and we practice listening.
In these ways, may we become skillful.
July 5–9, 2021
8:00–8:30 a.m.
Waves of the Mind
I have been thinking about the ways human beings find meaning in pattern, how that serves as a strategy for coping with uncertainty, and the ways this ability can be both benevolent and not.
Awakening Spring: A Meditation Retreat
With this seasonal change I will call upon an archetype of earth, the fecund and great Mother, in all her lustiness and intensity. She brings us the flowers and honey, the sweet colours of spring, and the terrific force of birth. She is one who will not be denied, and we do not control her. Join me in meeting Spring with a seasonal retreat: March 15–19, 8:00–8:30 a.m.
Winter Practice
Today, just a quick note today to let you know that the Winter Schedule is live, with all classes resuming next week. You can find the details in my calendar, and described in this blog post.
I will pick up writing on the yamas and niyamas again in the coming weeks — continuing a winter-appropriate exploration of ethical precepts in the philosophy of yoga.
Turn the Year: A Meditation Retreat
It is natural to take time to reflect as the year turns — a time for meditative retreat in the darkest days after Winter Solstice. Let us close this year with a dedicated space for that reflection, to integrate and inquire…
December 28, 2020 – January 1, 2021 8:30–9 a.m.
The Notion of Refuge
I am grateful for a mini-retreat with a gang of you, just last week. Another opportunity to set new patterns, to contemplate teachings, and to simply SIT with it all and each other, five mornings in a row.
I chose the timing of these events deliberately, to build support into a time that was easy to predict would be fraught with tensions and anxiety.
Happy Thanksgiving
What would an authentic practice of gratitude look like for you? Can we nurture natural gratitude without burying “non-gratitude”? Let's play with this idea!
Riding the Wave
Many feel this season and the next will be long ones. I hear resignation and some dread. I feel these things, yet, I also experience a glimmer of excitement for the deep inward turn that will come with winter. A time to dig deep into rich material, dream-time, integration and quiet creation time.
Late, Late Summer
For the month of September, the meditation circle which I lead has been working with a metaphor practice:
body as mountain
breath as the sea
sky — mind
This is an invitation to think / sense / feel into these archetypes of the natural world, to contemplate their qualities and notice how our embodied experience might echo them. The imagery is boundless, but we can start from here…
August Retreat
Join me August 17–21 for one week of morning meditations, a miniature self-retreat, in community.
Working with the Weather
This week I am thinking about the weather, and what a beautiful metaphor it is for the nature of mind.
Ever Beginning
In my ongoing exploration of meditation practice I return again and again to the buddhist concept of “beginner mind.” Forever and always, we are new to this moment. There has not been one just like it, ever before. This is true now, was yesterday, and will be tomorrow.
Can we remain curious and open to newness, and to our inexpertise?