Graffiti Around Town


Is it benign multitasking or a sign of being too attached to social media that I am writing while I am waiting for the bus home? I have taken my moment to appreciate the beauty of the Dome.
Tonight, I think it is the former. I have twelve minutes to spare. Writing now means that I will not even be tempted to turn on the computer when I get home. I will pet the cats and wash and sit for meditation before getting ready for bed.
I can pause, here, thinking about the synchronicity of the centering Batya used at the beginning of class I took tonight (level 4 at Willow Street, Takoma Park). She told us of a story she had heard on a podcast about a woman who described having a stroke as freeing her mind from its incessant chatter when the language center of the brain was temporarily immobilized. That quiet is, in part, what comes from a deep and consistent meditation practice. The synchronicity was that I am reading Ram Das’s “Be Love Now” (hot off the press), which is inevitably leading me to think about the interconnection between yoga practice and facing a stroke. It is not something I think of often.
The more we are open and aware, though, the more we will see connections and synchronicities. The more consistently we practice, the more likely we are to experience the good in even the greatest of challenges.
And now, the bus is here, and I am on my way home.
When someone tells me I need to see the Divine I can get anxious that they mean I’m supposed to see whatever that person thinks is “the Divine.” I don’t think anyone ever should be required to do so by anybody else. I am, however, all for being reminded to see the divine if such exhortation is to look on whatever I encounter with the most gratitude and compassion and wonder I can muster.
Here: two kinds of tomatoes with two versions of the goddess (Tara and Uma (a/k/a Parvati)). I had only a large tomato or two per week throughout the summer; with the equinox passing, the vines are for some inexplicable reason now abundant. I will either be making a good sauce in October or pickling green tomatoes, depending on how soon we get a frost. Or perhaps both.