Another Person’s Treasure
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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“Just a little green…”
A neighbor who lives in the top floor of the building across the street, and thus has a spectacular view of the maples in front of my house writes:
“The buds on your tree are more numerous than yesterday, and more visibly that color that Joni Mitchell sang about: “just a little green, like the color when the spring is born...” And we’re getting a good, soaking rain. Happy Spring!”
I have heard the song so many times, I do not need to look it up, except to share both with those for whom it is not part of an intimate map of a long ago period and with those for whom it is and who will have, by just seeing the words (and even more so by listening), some upsurge of memories and a revelation of the miraculous play of consciousness.
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“There’s an intimate connection between the brain and the heart…”
In case you were looking for another reason to share the yoga with friends who might otherwise think that yoga would be too hard for them and to make your practice more regular. Go Kansas City!
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Vegan Butterscotch Apple-Walnut Squares
1. Wisk together in a large bowl until creamy, 2/3 cup Agave nectar and 1/3 cut canola or walnut oil.
2. Pulverize (in a blender or mini-food processor is easier than by hand with a good-sized mortar and pestle) until slightly viscose (this is the egg replacer) 1/4 cup ground flax seed or flax seed with 2 tbs hot water and 2 tbs maple syrup.
3. Blend well all the above ingredients together. Stir in a splash of vanilla extract.
4. In a separate bowl, sift or mix together 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour and dash of salt and cinnamon to taste (1-3 tsps.) and 1 tsp aluminum free baking power.
5. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just completely combined. Please do not overmix.
6. Mix in 1/2 cup chopped nuts (walnuts are best or another nut that grows in the same climate as apples) and then 1 cup apple (about one small to medium-sized apple) with the skin left on in 1/4 to 1/2 inch dice.
7. Oil a 8×8 inch pan; smooth dough evenly in pan, it will be almost like a batter.
8. (Optional) Combine 1-2 tbs of turbinado (raw sugar) crystals and some combination of cinnamon, all spice, nutmeg, Sprinkle as a topping.
9. Bake at 325F (no need to preheat the oven) for 16-20 minutes. Watch carefully to see that it does not burn.
Makes 16-25 squares. They are quite sweet, so a few bites is just the right amount.
(Apologies for the terrible Blackberry Photo)
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Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
“I Don’t Care If It Rains or Freezes…” (and freedom from the pairs of opposites)
When I was walking into work in the cold rain this morning, the song “Plastic Jesus” arose in my head. I thought that I didn’t know many of the lyrics, but when I got back and checked for recordings to see just how much I was missing, I realized it was because there aren’t many lyrics. Here is Paul Newman singing it in Cool Hand Luke. The Levellers have a great cover (with some variations on the lyrics–listen carefully), as do the Flaming Lips. The original is harder to find.
With it’s gentle tongue in cheek message, the song invites us to contemplate the real purpose of any spiritual practice (including the yoga — see, for example, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, at 2.46-2.48): to be sufficiently full of love and devotion and recognition of spirit, that we are not ungrounded or driven to suffering when faced with discomfort or inconvenience. And if we get really good, freedom from suffering in the face of true pain, loss, and outrage. That is, of course, a key reason for practicing.
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Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos | Poetry
Making Beauty
My top word for the week is “dank,” which evokes so much in so little space.
I was attending a conference for much of the early part of the week and simultaneously needed to meet a combination of expected and unexpected deadlines.
I had the delight and nourishment, though, of my daily practice and teaching.
Through making art — however we do it — we find the beauty that is there. Even in the circa 1974, tied for the second ugliest building on the National Mall, Frances Perkins Department of Labor Building before 8am on another dank morning.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Magic Carpet?
Do you ever stop to wonder about the ubiquitous, wildly patterned expanses of carpets at the big chain hotels?
What might be the reasons for such carpets?
1. The carpet designers all ingested some kind of substance that gave them visions?
2. Patterns hide the dirt better than solids?
3. The interior designer wanted to make sure that the hotel carpet could not possibly be like one you would have at home–thus giving some fantastical notion of the exotic?
4. The hotel wanted to make sure that if your eyes glazed over during some conference that the swirling of the patterns could draw you into some entrancing meditative state that you would associate with visiting the hotel?
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Found Exhortation?
Could you find your innards gorgeous–the blood, sinovial fluid, organs of digestion and elimination? What about your inner thoughts and memories, the ones you do not want to share?
That, of course, is not the point, here. What does it mean to be gorgeous inside? As a found exhortation it is to invite us to find (and seek) the wondrous and exquisite place where external (including your internal critic) judgment and values become irrelevant (even while recognizing that we are still working on things).
To find that gorgeous and glorious inner space and rest in it is one of the reasons to meditate–especially those of us who have a tendency to hear at times all too loudly the inner and outer voices of criticism.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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An Apparent Offering to the Gods
I am in a different part of town for an educational conference. I had lunch at a Japanese restaurant where the sushi chefs were prattling to each other in Spanish. This offering was in the waiting area; to whose gods, I wondered?
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Snow and Blossoms (Morning Walk via the Capitol to Dupont Circle)
I got out of the house by 7:30 this morning because I knew the dusting of snow would not last long, and I wanted to enjoy the combination of blossoms and snow making every thing vibrate with beauty. I was not disappointed. The sun started to come out just after I had fully circumnavigated the Capitol. By the time I got to Lafayette Square, the snow was all melted, but the blossoms sparkled even more. It was such a glorious walk through the neighborhood, I was quite ecstatic, and at one point, I thought perhaps I was hallucinating when I first crested the Capitol grounds around 8am; from loudspeakers on the Mall (presumably there for Cherry Blossom Festival events), someone was blaring the Clash, singing “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”
Could I really have been hearing the Clash being broadcast on the National Mall at 8am on a Sunday morning? I remembered thinking we were making a statement when we blared the Sex Pistols as we drove across the 14th Street bridge towards the Capitol on July 4rh in the mid-80s. I remembered how disappointed my friends and I were when Joey Strummer disappeared the year I was living in London, and we didn’t get to see the Clash in Brixton. I allowed the flood of memories to rush in and then fade with the music. I thought of all the years I have been walking around this city, and how many times it has snowed while the blossoms are in bloom–more frequent than one might think.
I watched the melting snow start to glitter in the sun and the blossoms vibrating with their ephemeral beauty. And then I walked on through downtown, past the White House, and up to Dupont Circle, stopping to buy apples and mushrooms at the Dupont Fresh Farm Market before attending meeting for worship at Friends Meeting of Washington.
