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    Call and Response

    ByElizabeth

    I went to a Lenten service for ceasefire that was led in front of the White House today. First there was a Catholic Mass and then an ecumenical service.

    I sometimes participate in religious rituals outside of my own, as a way of honoring our shared and diverse experience of being.

    This is the first time I have gone to a Christian service on Ash Wednesday. No ashes for me. I was willing to, however, to participate in the invitation to participate in a call and response. The speaker listed the heinous atrocities that our tax dollars are funding, and the response was the acknowledgment that “I have blood on my hands.”

    I’m still complicit even if I am letting those with power know that I do not agree, although that is better than being silent. One of the religious speakers suggested that repentance does not mean regret. It means acknowledgement and a change of behavior.

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    Misty Dawn Walk

    ByElizabeth

    I just returned from a trip to the Catskills for a long weekend of yoga, meditation, and a swimming lake in green mountains. I woke each morning before dawn and went out to be with the rising of the light.  One morning dawned with a dense mist and fog.  The doe was about to bound across the path as I was walking.  She stopped short.  I stepped back.  Both of us equally startled.  We looked at each other benignly curious.  Then she ambled off and I did the same. On the way back to the guest house, I saw a porcupine run across the lawn.  I understand that they are great pests, but I truly enjoyed getting to see one.  I think I might like the porcupine as a spirit animal.

    Lake 1a Lake 1bShe was lake 1c

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    Aphids (and limitations)

    ByElizabeth

    Even though we had real, hard frosts this winter, there are already aphids on my roses.  I went out this morning and picked the aphids off of the new buds — yes, my roses are budding.  It was too cold to stay out long, but I did a little weeding and planted a couple of pots of pansies.

    I was thinking about how I garden in my tiny space — using my fingers to take the aphids off of each rose bud, pulling up individual weeds between new plants in containers, choosing to let some volunteers come up between bricks because it expands my planting area.  How different it would be if I even had a small yard by suburban standards.  It would not be possible to attend to all the detail that I see, unless I were to spend every waking hour in the garden.  If I had an acre, it would take three full-time gardeners to attend without tools and sprays the small things I touch by hand.

    It seems we make our world as big or as small as we want it.  My tiny garden is as much a universe for me as a gardener as would be an acre garden — though of course I cannot grow sprawling things like melons and potatoes and fruit trees.

    But the fullness of how much I see and experience, how much calls out for love and attention, how much I am enriched by tending and observing what is there,  is not diminished by what I do not have.  Rather, I am called to expand to the greatest what I have within my limits.  This is true, too, in our yoga and meditation practice, and our lives.  We can choose to live expansively no matter what our limits or we can choose to feel bound and diminished by our limits.  The garden, this morning, helped me remind myself of that choice.  It helped me turn towards possibilities for growth instead of towards constriction.

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