Morning Walk at the National Arboretum (Happy May Day)
A place to drink in the beauty. For information on how to help preserve the azalea collection (which is under siege from budget cuts), please visit: “Save the Azaleas.”
A place to drink in the beauty. For information on how to help preserve the azalea collection (which is under siege from budget cuts), please visit: “Save the Azaleas.”
I am ok and grateful for my well-being. I am also, among other things, grieving the death of two different friends in the last month and the remaining dregs of democracy. I could be more ok than the ok that I am. Some people aren’t ok at all. How are you?

And with the day I had, it was a good thing I started the day with practice and reminders.

Yesterday, the first of the year, I pulled off the shelf and opened at random Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird.” I’d found it used some time ago and was interested, but other things got ahead of it on my reading pile. The page to which I opened seems highly topical for what is coming this year:
For instance, I used to think that paired opposites were a given, that love was the opposite of hate, right the opposite of wrong. But now I think we sometimes buy into these concepts because it is so much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality. I don’t think anything is the opposite of love. Reality is unforgivingly complex.
May we find enough love to suffer well the complexities to come this year. For me, I know that deepening and recommitting to my practice will help me find what more I can offer.
Sometimes, the best thing to do is nothing.
The past few days have been very full. Last week was an intense week at work. I am enjoying having a house guest and deepening a new friendship. The workshop sessions on Friday night and this morning with Amy Ippoliti at Willow Street were wild and rich with information and play. I always enjoy teaching my two Saturday classes. Among all this activity, I hosted a little dinner party last night, which was quiet, but bubbling over with conversation.
After the workshop this morning, instead of going right home, I rode to Dupont Circle and had brunch with a fellow yogini, after which we walked up to Columbia Heights through Meridian Hill Park. We had a fantastic time talking and catching up, and I loved doing a little exploring in a part of the city that is outside my usual haunts.
All of these activities were healthy and life enhancing, but still, it was a lot. Just as including savasana is critical to assimilating the benefits of a good yoga practice into the fabric of being, taking a nap this afternoon before having one more evening of visiting with my friend Elisa and my getting ready for a couple of jam-packed, demanding work days, the sweet rest of a Sunday afternoon nap was critical for me to allow all the delights of the weekend to settle and integrate, to feel rested and enriched, instead of feeling like I need another weekend to rest from the weekend.