Invitation to Gratitude and Inspiration
Free Streaming Yoga Christmas Eve (TODAY!) and New Year’s Eve
Nurture Your Gifts and Release What No Longer Serves
Time: 4:00-5:30pm
Date: Thursdays–December 24 and 31
Register at: https://www.suzannelynchwellness.com/holiday-yoga-classes
We’ll be signing on early if you just want to say hello.
Please feel free both to forward and to ask any questions.
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It’s still March, and we’re in the middle of one big and fabulous rainstorm. Tomorrow (Saturday) might not be a great day for getting out into the garden (unless you like wading in mud), but it will be an absolutely fantastic day to do yoga with an intention of readying body, mind, and spirit for the garden and to get in tune with all that is growing and has the potential to grow inside and out. Come join me for Yoga for Gardeners at Willow Street Takoma Park and help support the Youth Garden at the National Arboretum.
I just received this letter and wanted to pass it on to those who have senators and members of Congress (those of us in DC still do not):
Dear Elizabeth Goodman,One of our lobbyists just reported to me that some members of the supercommittee are telling us they are open to cutting Pentagon spending. “We need to hear what the folks back home in our state have to say about this,” we heard.The most important voice in this budget debate is your voices as constituents. As they make their decision, your members of Congress need to hear your side of this story. They need to hear about the consequences in your communities when money isn’t invested in schools, roads, jobs, and other local priorities.Today, will you write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper? Refer to your members of Congress by name and point out the needs in your local community.Communities around the country are being squeezed. More people are relying on food banks; local governments are copying with both the neighborhood and family stress of foreclosure; schools are increasing class sizes and shortening the school year; and critical maintenance on bridges and roadways. Police and firefighters are losing their jobs. Yet, the Pentagon budget continues to grow.Congress will take action to reduce the deficit, which means budget cuts. But if Congress doesn’t act to cut at Pentagon spending by a significant amount — FCNL and others believe that number is $1 trillion over the next ten years — then the cuts to other programs will be much deeper. Cutting the Pentagon budget and potentially making more funds available to meet the needs of state and local communities. There is an opportunity to make this change.Thank you for your action.Sincerely,Diane RandallExecutive Secretary P.S. If you want to know more about how much Pentagon spending is slated to rise, or more on FCNL’s views on the debt, deficit and supercommittee, visit our website.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
I just spent a week looking at the celestial realms — inner and outer. Fifty of us spent a week meditating and studying with Paul Muller-Ortega at a retreat center in Sedona. It might seem from these pictures that there was not a moment when we weren’t exclaiming in awe over magnificent visions. The truth is that many times of the day, the sky was not spectacular, but I was always looking and always had my camera in my pocket, whether the sky was dull or flat when I left my room or whether it was engaged in some outrageous display of light. The photographs below are in chronological order to show the pulsation of night and day, the progression of the moon from almost full to full, the shift in mood from day to day. But, the images show a completely edited view. There were the views for which I did not take out my camera at all. Those were the majority, but I was still looking. There were the views I photographed, but deleted from the camera memory, choosing not even to save them. There are the photographs that I downloaded onto my computer, but did not even enlarge to get a better view. There are photographs I enlarged, but decided not to edit. Then there were the photographs I chose to edit by making decisions about cropping, brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation. The photos below are a subset of the last group.
If I were doing a show where I printed and framed the work, I would have worked from at least ten times as many images and would have done multiple prints of each image before choosing what to display. In this persistency and discrimination, photography teaches much about meditation practice. To show what is seen in a way that shifts the soul of the viewer, the photographer has to look over and over again. For example, Robert Frank took over 20,000 images for “The Americans.”
Anyone (especially these days with the technology available) can take an extraordinary picture or two if in the right place at the right time with the camera. But to have a body of work takes consistent devotion, work, and presence. So too, with our meditation practice. Some days exquisite visions arise. Sometimes we are pulsing with extraordinary energy that fills us with a sense of the very fullness of being. Other times, old issues or the to do list or even feeling trapped by sitting still is what comes. If we sit consistently over a long period of time, though, we will witness — just as the camera did — the extraordinary. We will know from being consistent that it is our very consistency that reveals bliss.
Perhaps it would be more accurate that I sought to get my Covid-19 booster shot (got the flu vaccine last month), and the sign was there. Although I am a low user of Western medicine other than dental and vision care and generally decline testing in the absence of symptoms I cannot resolve through common sense things appropriate to the issue, I make sure that I am vaccinated for all contagious diseases. My medical choice is no longer in any way just about me.
PS Is your tetanus shot current?
