Advice from a Flamingo


It’s rare that I feel the need to check the weather before leading my practice group into savasana, but tonight I did. Knowing how long it would take the last person to get home, I checked again as everyone gathered their things. There was just enough time if we did not tarry.
This evening I attended a gathering at Meridian Hill Park with several hundred Jewish people and a some allies and a few dozen police (not sure whether the police were there intentionally to be threatening or to be of supposed protection).
The gathering was to mourn the 1200 killed on October 7, the 250 taken hostage, and the tens of thousands killed and millions displaced since then. Whether the speakers were Jewish or Palestinian or Christian or Hindu, they were unified in their belief (relying on the texts and teachings that informed their faith), that no lives are more precious than others. The rabbis were emphatic that continuing to bomb and displace Palestinians and now, Lebanese, makes no one safer.
We must stop the relentless funding of war, the destruction of life and communities and the ecosystem if we and our companion species (flora and fauna) are ever to thrive.
Om shanti, shanti, shanti.
Shalom.
