A Small Way to Help
Exposure notifications are enabled. I already voted. I have had zero indoor social contact except for occasional masked, socially distant shopping and some home repairs. But this might still help, and it is easy enough.
Exposure notifications are enabled. I already voted. I have had zero indoor social contact except for occasional masked, socially distant shopping and some home repairs. But this might still help, and it is easy enough.
When it gets cold and rainy, there is little I enjoy more than a good, warm restorative yoga practice. If you live in town, come join me this Saturday at Capitol Hill Yoga for this month’s Serenity Saturday workshop. I’ll be bringing out all of the blankets.
I am taking off most of the work day so that I can attend a special three-hour asana practice at Willow Street Yoga with Desiree Rumbaugh. In order to get done things that should not wait until Monday, I chose to start working at 6, so I could forget about work when I left for Silver Spring at 9 am for the workshop. I needed my usual practice time to get done what needed to be done in the time allotted.
I noticed that I felt just a little edgier and less grounded this morning. Was it just feeling the pressure of needing to get things done or was it not having done my usual practice?
As I contemplated this question, I invited into myself the feelings I get from practicing, which I could do precisely because it is the first morning in a couple hundred mornings I have not sat for meditation.
What is important, though, is not to be addicted (with the side effects that come with any addiction when deprived), even as we are wholly committed to practice to have its benefits keep growing.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Earlier in the week, on my way home from a conference on the other side of town, I found on the $1 cart outside of Second Story Books, Starhawk’s Dreaming the Dark — Magic, Sex and Politics. Though I always learn something from reading Starhawk’s books and I had not read this one yet, the book was so heavily underlined, I thought twice about getting it.
Something made me hesitate before putting it back, and I opened it at random. On the page was the following: “Directed energy causes change. To have integrity, we must recognize that our choices bring about consequences, and that we cannot escape responsibility for the consequences, not because they are imposed by some external authority, but because they are inherent in the choices themselves.”
I wondered why this had not been underlined in full when so much of the rest of the page had been underlined because I thought on reading it: “Exactly right; that speaks to our current condition.”
And being in the midst this dialogue in which there has been so much discussion of integrity (along with what we might have caused and how we might have been affected by certain actions), I dismissed the possibility that the underlining would be too intrusive for my own reading because, yes, this teaching comes at just the right time in just the right context for deep contemplation of the deep truth that to act with integrity, we must appreciate our own contribution to causes and results/responses in the undulating fabric of our connected being.
My first reaction when seeing young people go past my house without a mask, is to ask, where’s your mask? My second reaction may not be kind. I am trying to make a habit of thinking, may they be happy–starting in the middle of the litany.
That may be more about enlightened self-interest, than exercising true compassion, but it’s a start.

Last week the supplemental electrical panel necessitated by living in “this Old House” was installed. The existing panel did not have room for the solar panels to be connected.
Today, the DC Building inspector came, inspected, and gave approval (conditional on contractor sending photos of the roof). Last step is to get PEPCO to come and change the meter. That could take a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, there is no rain in the 15-day forecast. Best start doing the rain dances.