Art and Culture

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    Letter from Friends Committee on National Legislation on Budget Priorities

    ByElizabeth

    Wanted to share with all of you the text (plus link) of an email I received today from FCNL:

    Here in Washington, everyone agrees that the current level of federal budget deficits is unsustainable. Our FCNL policy is that – with a few exceptions – government should take in sufficient revenue to cover the nation’s needs.  But as our lawmakers debate how to cut the deficit, we need to insist on truth telling; a serious consideration of all federal spending, including the Pentagon’s budget; and open discussion about priorities. Contact your representative today.

    take actionThe plan that the House leadership offers for a vote on Friday fails that test. The plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (WI) reduces the $15 trillion federal budget debt by about $155 billion over 10 years – that’s a drop in the ocean. This plan “saves money” by transferring resources from programs that assist people with low and moderate incomes to wealthy individuals and corporations.

    Rep. Ryan’s plan, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, would cut $4.3 billion in federal spending – two-thirds of that directed at programs for people of low and moderate incomes. The plan would then give $4.2 billion of that sum away in tax cuts that benefit primarily wealthy individuals and corporations.

    We at FCNL want Congress to be serious about federal government spending, which means looking at ALL expenditures and balancing priorities. Cutting waste, fraud and abuse makes good sense. The place to start  is with Pentagon spending. Fair and adequate taxes and other government programs should also be examined.

     

    Take Action

    Urge your representative to reject the Ryan budget and to support efforts to make at least $100 billion a year in cuts to the Pentagon budget, as recommended by the Sustainable Defense Task Force.

    Ask 5 friends to contact their representative too.

     

    Find Out More

    Who says we can and should cut Pentagon spending? The answer may surprise you.

    The Sustainable Defense Task Force outlined how nearly $1 trillion could be cut from the Pentagon budget over the next 10 years. Read the summary and share it with others in your community.

    Read the analysis of Rep. Ryan’s budget that was done by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

    Find out more about the Our Nation’s Checkbook campaign to shift money from the military budget to advance other priorities.

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    A Good Place to Sit

    ByElizabeth

    I came out briefly to sit and contemplate and write in my journal before a staff meeting at lunch time (no lunch provided).

    The Scott Burton chairs in the National Sculpture Garden are one of the more delightful places to sit outside near my office.

    First, I was joined by several birds. Then some tourists came along. The one with all the jewels sat down at the direction of her friend in orange for a photo. “We’re not allowed to sit here,” the sitter said with a little glee in her voice.

    I directed her to the sign near the seats giving permission. This led the photographer both to sit down with her friend, but also to lose any real interest in taking the photograph.

    What was it about the loss of transgressiveness that made the photo less desirable? The chairs are the same whether permitted or not. In fact, with sitting permitted, there is more time to explore fully their function as chair as well as their form as art.

    This set me wondering about how much our desires are driven by social ideas, rather than needs and comforts.

    A father and his son approach the chairs fro the other direction. After reading the sign giving permission to sit, they promptly sat down. The bare statement “granite chairs,” was all that was said before they got back up and went on they’re way.

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    April Greetings–Delving into the Essential (Web Version of E-Newsletter)

    ByElizabeth

    Dear Friends,

    It has been a mind-boggling several weeks.  The magnitude of the upheavals and the impact on all of the world, including human beings, is beyond my ability to grasp.  Closer up than the unfolding devastation in Japan and the escalating war in Libya, which daily adds to the bankrupting of this country and planet by our wars, I found myself supporting committed organizations, signing petitions, and writing emails saying that I preferred to be locked out of my work place with no pay than to have taken away any existing protection of the environment or provision health care for low income women.  As my mind tries to expand enough to stay present and active, I am more grateful every day to have and share the practice of yoga.

    Practicing helps us minimize suffering by changing how we relate to pain and the full range of human emotion.  The goal, I think, is to fully and joyously engage in life with an intention to live as harmoniously as possible with all beings, including our individual selves, and simultaneously appreciate and be wonderstruck at the extraordinary and wild vastness of being that makes the time and space of the known universe seem finite relative to life (lives) on earth.  When we can find both perspectives simultaneously, then we can be engaged, but not attached (vairagya).

    How do we focus this intention to live fully and harmoniously in this way?    In the past six weeks, I have had the unbelievably fortuitous combination of circumstances to be able to study with John Friend for three days; to attend the Mahasivaratri celebration with Douglas Brooks, Krishna Das, John Friend, Amy Ippoliti, and Sianna Sherman; Ross Rayburn for a weekend workshop at Willow Street;; Desiree Rumbaugh at a special three-hour practice the following week at Willow Street; and Paul Muller-Ortega via telephone conference.

    Wow, that was a whole lot of input for my practice and contemplation, while living itself was getting more intense.  But, it turned out not to be too much because of the singularity of the teachings.  The message I heard from all of these teachers in their own unique and inspiring voices was that is is a good time to get down to get back to basics, or to put it another way, to explore more deeply the essential principles of practice (and of life).  By getting back to the basics in the practice, we can start knowing at a deeper level what is essential for us to relate as deeply and joyously and non-harmingly (yes, I know it isn’t a word, but I’d like it if it were) on and off the mat to ourselves and all in our web of relationship.

    In both my practice and my public class offerings, this Spring, I am especially focused on exploring what is essential to experience life at its most joyous while still be conscious and committed to the need for effort to change.  In addition to continuing my regular class offerings, I am pleased to be offering a short course in restorative yoga at Willow Street, “Cultivating Relaxation with Restorative Yoga.”

    Restorative yoga is perfect whether you are looking for a gentler way to get started with yoga, an opportunity to relax, or alternative practices for when you are feeling stiff or in pain, or a way for advanced practitioners to explore the alignment principles at the subtlest levels. We will explore a variety of types of supported postures and prop-assisted stretches to enable you to relax into optimal alignment, discover your own space of deep rest and peacefulness, and open your body. The course will also offer simple techniques to ease into sleep, find mini-relaxation moments when things are hectic, and sweeten your home practice–what could be of better service these days?  Everybody welcome. 6 Thursdays, 4/21-5/26.

    To get news in between the occasional email offerings or to see my latest short thoughts, please “like” my new “Rose Garden Yoga” page on Facebook.

    I look forward to seeing you in person soon.  As always, please feel comfortable being in touch by comment on the blog or by email.
    Peace and light,

    Elizabeth

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    What Do You See?

    ByElizabeth

    What do you first notice when you look at this photo? What do you notice next? Do you find yourself making aesthetic judgments or comparisons? What about moral judgments?

    Is it possible truly to witness without judgment? To see the good (or at least the potential for good) in everything, even if it does not please us or fit in with how we would like the world to be?

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    “Just a little green…”

    ByElizabeth

    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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    “I Don’t Care If It Rains or Freezes…” (and freedom from the pairs of opposites)

    ByElizabeth

    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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    Making Beauty

    ByElizabeth

    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?

    ByElizabeth

    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.