A Glimpse of the Studio
Send me an email or message me if you’d like to practice. I’m working pretty hard, but like to share practice evenings and weekends. Now is the time when there’s daylight even for an evening practice.

Send me an email or message me if you’d like to practice. I’m working pretty hard, but like to share practice evenings and weekends. Now is the time when there’s daylight even for an evening practice.

The sky was luminous and beautiful early this morning when I headed out to teach. The air was scrubbed clear by the cold front that passed through in the night, leaving behind fluffy clouds to highlight the luminousity of the sun rising.
As I enjoyed looking at the clouds and light in the sky on my walk to Union Station to catch the metro to go teach, I thought about seeing the sky in Arizona next week. When I am there, I always feel a keen delight when I look at the sky. Then I thought that the sky is just as lovely here. It is that things on the land are bigger and farther apart out west that make the sky seem bigger.
When life is easeful and we are feeling spacious, then the inner place of meditation can feel more luminous than when we are struggling through the day. But just as the sky is just as big wherever we are on the planet, the inner space of meditation is just as vast and luminous no matter what is going on in our lives. The more we remember that and the more we look, the more we will have the opportunity to be lit up from the inside.
Yesterday, for the first time this year, there was more daylight than darkness. Today, it will be warm and sunny. Notice if the light and warmth brighten your mood. Then try to observe just where and how you are shifted so that when things seem dark and gloomy, you can find the place within yourself that responds to light and dark and invite in your own light to shift. This is a power of meditation.

When I was on my way to do volunteer work this morning, I rode the bus past the dregs of Occupy DC-McPherson Square. The police presence was thick. I wasn’t sure why the heavy construction equipment was necessary. It is hard to know what will happen to the movement when it loses its physical location. It is clear that the idea of “occupy” has already entered popular culture, and the idea of the 99% will be part of this year’s Federal elections.
As things are created and dissolved, it is always hard to know what will stay and what will disappear from the fabric of our lives. Part of it depends on the strength of the ideas. Part depends on the commitment of those involved to transform and evolve to keep what is good moving forward even when beset with challenge and upheaval. As for the last photograph, which was taken just down the street (the cop cars were clearly related to those in the Square)–I couldn’t tell you what god or whose country; could you?