Working From Home Lunch
Chard, beet greens, garlic chives, baby radishes, herbs, flowers from the garden; pantry items
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- Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Quaker
Found Exhortation (and the Women’s March on Washington)
I was volunteering today at William Penn House, which was providing a comfort station for marchers during the day, as well as being full to capacity with guests.
I was doing some work in the office when a woman who looked about my age came who was in town with a group of women from Long Island for the March.
She came in to William Penn House for a bathroom, not because of any connection to Quakers or the house. But while she was waiting in line for the bathroom she ended up in conversation with the executive director, who said that the board member volunteering downstairs was also from Long Island–perhaps she knew me. It turns out that we went to the same elementary school and lived near enough to each other that we rode the same school bus.
It is just one of the reminders I’ve had this weekend of how connected we are.
Foster Cats
On Saturday night, two foster cats were delivered to my house. I have been living without any pets for almost a year. I have only spent six years of my life — three of my college years, two of my law school years, and this past year after my cats of 21 and 18 whom I had adopted in 1988 left their bodies — without a cat or dog (or gerbil, hamster, rabbit) in the house. Early in the year I was grieving. As the year progressed, I came up with different reasons why I wasn’t ready to, or shouldn’t get another cat. In the last month or two, I noticed that I had not gotten a cold since Becky passed. I was starting to think that maybe I had a choice between feeling somewhat empty for the absence of pet energy or being sick.
On Wednesday, I responded rather casually to a plea to find foster home for two adult cats who needed a home because their current home-maker was suffering from cancer and would not be able to keep them. If they did not find a foster place here right away, they were going to be shipped to Iowa in the cargo hold. They had already been adopted from a shelter once, and are not a good age for easy adoption at a shelter. So I have taken them in, theoretically on a temporary basis, but they are growing on me fast.
Appreciation
What a brightly beautiful day. I persevere in letting go of the qualifier if only it were warmer.
Winter Gardening Fun
It was a day of meetings and conversations and emails. I’m in the middle of a major project, and it feels demanding. I’m being careful to take good care of myself.
On the walk home, just as the last glimmers of daylight were fading, I could feel the temperature dropping. Any last warmth was being blown away by the wind. I was bundled up and had my computer with me with the intention of working from home. The sky was like a black opal–dark blue-grays with fiery orange streaks. The walk (chanting the Maha mrityunjaya mantra for some of the way) shifted me out of work mode.
I came home to my newest gardening venture. The worms will arrive separately; they will be held for me at the post office to keep them out of the cold.
Experienced vermicomposters, please feel freee to post your favorite tips for happy, healthy, hungry worms.
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After the Exhileration, Work
We all (or at least most of those who would be reading this blog) have heard the Buddhist-inspired saying: before enlightenment, the laundry. After enlightenment, the laundry. The question is whether after the moments of enlightenment can we infuse doing the laundry with more joy, acceptance, and peace. A young adult acquaintance asked me the other day whether I was readjusting ok. I did not know to what he was referring, and he had to explain that he was asking how I was doing on my return from my India trip. “It was just a vacation–albeit an extraordinary one,” I replied. “Life continues.”
“The good experiences just slip away like dry sand through my fingers,” he made a motion of letting something slip away.
“When you practice and when you get older, it will be easier to bring the temporary, good experiences into your life without feeling they are lost when you have moved onto the next thing,” I said with hope that would actually be true for him, he seemed so bereft.
The yoga teaches us neither to be out searching for the highs nor actively avoiding the lows; the dance of grasping and avoiding is what makes us suffer. That does not mean that the highs, the times of wild abandoned joy, the experiences of utter fulfillment, of exquisite understanding are of no value. What brings joy is a thing of wonder and an opportunity to deepen our ability to love and be generous. They are only a problem if we ruin our time by vainly clinging to or trying to repeat the sensation. As our practice (and our understanding of a life well-lived and loved) matures, we understand that there is no readjusting in the return to the day to day. We welcome what we have had, try to remember what we have learned, including how much joy and delight we are able to drink in, and approach each day as another opportunity to seek and share connection.
