This week I have really noticed the light changing. When I start my morning meditation, the day is just dawning, not full daylight. The cat is not waking me up an hour before the electronic wake-up call, but is rather showing up just before it goes off (he is acting in sync with my routine rather than with the birds’). Even though the days are still hot, there are hints of autumn in the smell of the leaves and certain breezes. The first of the late summer fruits and vegetables are starting to come.
Are you noticing the subtle shifts? Has it changed what you want to practice and how you are feeling when you practice?
I meant to post a picture of yet another heart-shaped cloud (this one a rosy pink at twilight). The memory card that had the picture, though, insisted on being reformatted and dissolving the data. One minute there, the next second dissolved–play (lila) like Shiva. I offer you instead this picture of the African violet again in full bloom. It is a plant happy to be where it is.
What’s a gardener and concerned for the trees and the health of the planet citizen to do? I’ve got enough water in the rain barrel to water the vegetables and herbs once or twice, but what impact does that really have? At work, people were grumbling because it was cloudy. They seemed shocked when I advised them that we are an inch under normal rainfall for August and have a fairly significant deficit for the summer despite the July rains.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could move some of the flood waters that have fallen only a couple hundred miles away to irrigate our fields without disrupting our eco-system? Part of me just wants not to know about the consequences of global climate change, but it is hard not to notice that all the weather patterns I used to know and understand do not seem to apply quite the same way anymore. What do we do when the systems and practices we have in place for our ease, comfort, well-being, and understood day-to-day peace of mind are disrupted?
Yoga will not fix the big outer problems, but it can provide us with the steadiness and ease needed to stay present and be flexible in the face of crisis, upheaval, or disease. It can also provide insight into how we can live in better alignment. In the meantime, I am practicing gratitude. I know how blessed I am that, so far, the wild upheavals I read about in the news have not kept me from all the food and comfort that a person could possibly want. And I pay attention, because to be ignorant ultimately never serves ourselves or others.
