The seasons change no matter how humans are behaving. Grieving for all the nameless suffering and for a couple of friends who have died very recently. Please be kind with your tender hearts.
Here’s a bit of beauty.
Gertrude Stein quote on wall at exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
This month’s recipient will be the Environmental Defense Fund. Why? Because in his State of the Union Address to much applause by Democrats (Republicans don’t clap for a Democratic President even if he is giving them everything they want), President Obama announced that part of the support for “clean” energy would be for nuclear power plants, “clean” coal (an oxymoron if I ever heard one), and off-shore drilling.
You might wonder why not have the February cause be an organization that is doing work in Haiti? I feel it is important to support organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee and Doctors Without Borders, who are doing yeoman-like work to ease suffering in Haiti and other places around the globe, and I have given some support. Following disasters or major incidents, though, society as a whole often experiences “donor fatigue.” I want to make sure that in the aftermath, the other changes I seek in the world do not go unsupported by me. So I try to give extra, and I try to remember all the things about which I care.
I have in my library books in which just one phrase or just the very beginning is most resonant. It is this time of summer, when the light seems endless, and the heat just setting in as if on a permanent basis, that my thoughts turn to watermelon in food, and again in literature. I think of watermelon differently each summer from the perspective of having lived another year, and the same in having experienced the taste and the thoughts of the taste so many times before. When it comes the time of year when thoughts of watermelon spontaneously arise, I revisit these words:
“In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar. I’ll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant. Wherever you are, we must do the best we can. It is so far to travel, and we have nothing here to travel, except watermelon sugar.” (R. Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar).
Refreshed, I put the book back on the shelf, look forward to eating watermelon from the fresh farm market, and set the intention to start each day with open, receptive, and unjaundiced eyes, ready to learn and experience the same old things as glorious new ones, and to do the best I can.
As I was noticing the decorations going up around the neighborhood about witches, ghosts, vampires, and ghouls, I found myself reflecting that as in the cultures that brought us Halloween, Indian folk tales are replete with stories of yogis who are practitioners of black magic. Even Patanjali, in his Yoga Sutras, warns that the practices (sadhana) must be for the purpose of uniting with spirit and not for attachment to the idea of developing supernatural powers.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Yesterday, while watching the Capitol City Symphony and Capitol Hill Chorale’s joint performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony at the Atlas Theater, I noticed with some amusement the cymbol player reading a novel in the wings through the first three movements. (The triangle player appeared just in time for the fourth movement).
This reminded me of an anecdote John Friend told at the Anusara Certified Teachers’ Gathering in Denver the other week to illustrate the importance of every person and element to the whole. He spoke of the triangle player. What do you say to him after the show, John asked, “great job man; I love the way you came in right when you were supposed to?” Even if showing up and playing one beat at the right time is the triangle player’s only job, the triangle player still is an integral part of the composition, though perhaps not as evidently crucial as the first violinist.
We may not know how we are essential or how we will shift things, but we should always revere and recognize each and every being, including ourselves, as part of the web of existence.
