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- Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Photos | Quaker
Call and Response
I went to a Lenten service for ceasefire that was led in front of the White House today. First there was a Catholic Mass and then an ecumenical service.
I sometimes participate in religious rituals outside of my own, as a way of honoring our shared and diverse experience of being.
This is the first time I have gone to a Christian service on Ash Wednesday. No ashes for me. I was willing to, however, to participate in the invitation to participate in a call and response. The speaker listed the heinous atrocities that our tax dollars are funding, and the response was the acknowledgment that “I have blood on my hands.”
I’m still complicit even if I am letting those with power know that I do not agree, although that is better than being silent. One of the religious speakers suggested that repentance does not mean regret. It means acknowledgement and a change of behavior.

Remembrance and Recognition
On this anniversary of my Grandmother Rose’s leaving her body and her daughter, my mother, entering hers, on this Armistice day though none in my lineage were warriors, I made in remembrance and recognition of my ancestors, this mala with a locket (still empty of pictures) that my grandmother bought at the Brooklyn Museum’s shop in the early 1970s–
Rudraksha Seed – auspiciousness and oneness
Iolite – connecting with angels
Laboradorite – perfection and protection
Amethyst – gentle, tranquil, soothing healing
Pyrite – fierce creativity, ingenuity
State of the Garden — Close Up (and Anticipation)
To deny or ignore the future is not the same as living in the present. To live perfectly in the present as a responsible and engaged part of the collective being, one must still plan for the future that will become a present. It is the perilous attachment to a particular outcome that can make bitter the present, not the engaged expectation of the future that is an inevitable part of living in the present.
As I worked in the garden this morning, I thought how much presence I find in the enjoyable anticipation of what will ripen in the future. And while anticipating cucumbers and tomatoes (and taking note of the damage caused by the birds), I set myself to enjoying fully the greens and herbs–the current abundance.
Blueberries, purple Cherokee tomato, grape tomato, echinacea, burpless cucumber, Italian eggplant, red Concord grapes, snow pea, green bean (Kentucky wonder)–June 10
- Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Puddles (and Prakasha and Vimarsha)
In the tantric yoga philosophy, two key concepts are that of prakasha and vimarsha–light and reflection. Prakasha is the fullness of the light of consciousness itself; vimarsha, the reflection of the light that is our own individual recognition of the light of consciousness in ourselves. The sweetly mysterious joy we get in seeing reflections in a puddle is the reminder we are given of the pulsing dance between the light and the reflection of the light, neither of which we can know without the other.



