The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We reflected on the inspirational power of mountains.  Our practice can guide us in finding “the landscape of life and action where [we] really come alive.”  Truly embodying this landscape we realize “the truth of impermanence, the truth of connectedness, the truth of cause and effect, of consequentiality, the truth of suffering and freedom from suffering.”

We heard A. R. Ammons’ poem:  Uppermost.  (Link is to Ada’s reading of the poem on the National Park Service Website.)  Our national poet laureate, Ada Limon, brought this poem to  our mountain  as part of her program called Poetry in the Parks.  Archie Randolph Ammons was an American poet through and through. According to his biographical article in Poets.org, “he started writing poetry aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer escort in the South Pacific. After completing service in World War II, he attended Wake Forest University and the University of California, Berkeley. During his early years, Ammons worked as an elementary school principal, a real estate salesman, an editor, and an executive in his father’s biological glass company before he began teaching at Cornell University in 1964”. For me, his work reflects the spirit of Walt Whitman.

We were inspired by mountaineer poet Nan Shepherd’s book The Living Mountain.  You can read a NYT review at Dear Armchair Mountaineers: A Cherished Literary Classic Awaits.   Her prose is beautiful and heartfelt.  Her descriptions of the mountain drew me in with their mindful embodiment and reverence for place.

We drew from Roshi Joan Halifax’s Reflections on Dogen’s Mountains and Rivers Sutra.  Roshi reminds readers that: “The mountains belong to those who love them. And we belong to the mountains. . . . Once you find the landscape of life and action where you come alive, this can be the geography where you come home to who you really are.”

We heard from Nicholas Triolo’s Orion Magazine essay:  Walk Toward, Ferocious in Love.  This was part of his Five Steps to Walk Away from Empire.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We reflected on the resources that enable us to live through our troubled times:  beloved family, humans and more-than-humans.  We contemplated the goodness of the world and the wonder of our very existence.  Love pulses through it all.

We drew inspiration from poet witness Muriel Rukeyser and her poem, Elegy in Joy. In essence, the poem call us to hold all of life – the joys and sorrows. It calls us to continue sowing seeds of beginnings even while we suffer loss.  In her book, The Life of Poetry, Muriel reminds readers that “in time of struggle all people think about love.”

Maria Popova’s Cosmic Poem for the Vera Rubin Observatory inspired us to feel wonder at our very existence.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  Hearing one another’s stories can help to tenderize the heart.  When we recognize our shared joys and sorrows compassion arises.  The space of loving awareness offers us the possibility of feeling deeply and opening the heart. To work for a better future,  poet Jane Hirshfield suggests: “people turn to one another for shared witness, for shared restoration, shared beauty.”

We heard from poet Jane Hirshfield’s essay, Poems in a Time of Crisis, Part Two: Tenderness.   Jane points to art and poetry to help – in her words – “undo fixity and despair, [to] increase possibility-sense and enlarge a person’s condition of being: tenderness, humility, courage, and resilience.”  Creativity and imagination can help to broaden our perspective and choose hope.

We heard  Maria Popova’s poem, The Purple Martin, from The Almanac of Birds: Divinations for Uncertain Days.  In this lovely poem Maria describes hope as “a motion of the heart.”  Given imagination and time we can choose hope over despair.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored the meaning of spiritual friendship and the many relational ways we find supportive kinship.  We drew inspiration and insight from:  nature lovers, philosophers, poets, teachers and writers.  We embodied friendliness in breathing, feeling and moving.

We drew inspiration from Maria Popova’s essay, The Wisdom of Trees:  Walt Whitman on What Our Silent Friends Teach Us About Being Rather than Seeming.  You can also view The Silent Friends: A Beautiful Short Film Celebrating Our Abiding Bond with Trees.

We heard meditation teacher Kate Johnson’s teachings on spiritual friendship.  You can find more at her Tricycle Magazine retreat, Admirable Friendship.  Kate share’s her intention to cultivate friendliness toward her loneliness as well as others.  She affirms the relational center of spiritual practice.

We heard from David Whyte’s essay, Friends, from his book
Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

We heard from May Lee-Yang, Minnesota-based Hmong American writer, performance artist, and teacher.  Her poem To All My Friends affirms the powerful gift of life sustaining friendships.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored how our practice can help us to see and think clearly.

We can recognize and experience our intimacy with our human and more-than-human relations.  We can become intimate with life.  This intimacy can free our imaginations and open our hearts to include the more-than-human world.

We heard from nature writer Robert Macfarlane’s new book, Is a River Alive?  Robert invites readers on a journey to three rivers across the world. In Ecuador, India and Canada, local people introduced Robert to their endangered rivers and the work they are doing to protect them.  Their efforts center around a recognition of rivers as living beings worthy of our respect and even reverence.

We also heard some of Robert’s conversation with Emergence Magazine editor Emanuel Vaughan-Lee.  Together they explore humans’ relationship with rivers and more-than-human earthlings.  Robert’s living questions reveal how “our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.”

We heard William Martin’s poem, We Are a River, drawn from Martin’s book, The Sage’s Tao Te Ching:  Ancient Advice for the Second Half of Life.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We were inspired by naturalists, scientists, Zen teachers and poets all pointing to our embodied creatureliness.  It is through our bodies, hearts and minds we perceive ourselves and the world around us; time and life’s unfolding mystery.

We drew on the wondrous work of David George Haskell:   Sounds Wild and Broken.  We head from the Emergence Magazine interview:  Listening and the Crisis of Inattention.    This is a conversation that  “touches on the legacies of kinship that are present when we listen, and how deep experiences of beauty can serve as a moral guide for the future. ”

We heard cognitive neuroscientist Irena Arslanova’s descriptions of how   our brain perceives time and how our body shapes how we experience it. She shares how our heartbeat influences whether we experience time moving fast or slow.  Slowing down, moving mindfully, meditating are all ways we can access the insights Irena describes.  This was from part 3 of a 4 part series How We Experience Time.  You can hear the full show and journey through the senses.

We heard from Jane Hirshfield’s Emergence Magazine interview, On Time, Mystery, and Kinship. In this endlessly fascinating discussion Jane and host Emanuel Vaughan-Lee explore time, attention, human need and kinship.  Jane shares her personal experience of monastic life, householder practice, relational life and art making.

We heard Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem, In a Dangerous Time.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored what it means to take Refuge: we are drawn into relationship, we offer our presence, care and support. We reflected on the many ways life becomes pilgrimage: a spiritual journey of transformation.

We considered how conflict can be an opportunity to restore relationships and build community building.

We drew on Kazu Haga’s book, Healing Resistance:  A Radically Different Response to Harm. Kazu is a longtime practitioner and trainer in nonviolence and restorative justice.  He described his very troubled adolescence and the profound experience of joining the 1998 Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage.  This pilgrimage lead to his commitment  to nonviolence through restoring relationships and building Beloved Community.

You can view the PBS Documentary: This Far by Faith (Segment: Rise Up and Call Their Names) and hear the pilgrims share their transformational journey.  It shows the hard work of community building and healing.

We heard Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem, Sacred Ground.  This poem is a reminder that we are pilgrims on life’s journey and every step we take is holy.

We heard Bhavya’s poem, A Sense of Belonging.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We explored the insights of life’s inescapable impermanence and uncertainty.  They can invite us into a relationship with the world beyond the self.  In realizing inter-being we can know that to heal the world is to heal the self.  We can love what we know we will lose.

Today’s class was inspired by the work of Zen teacher and writer Susan Murphy.  Susan was part of the 2025 Tricycle Magazine’s Buddhism & Ecology Summit.  She shared her experience of living through the 2019 Australian mega-fires.   As you might remember the Currawon fire went on for months devouring forests, towns, people and billions of creatures.  The smoke and ash were visible around the world, impacting air quality and weather patterns.

In her Tricycle Magazine article, Why Love What You Will Lose, she finds meaning in the Zen teachings on impermanence.  Impermanence and loss offer us the direct experience of our inter-being.  Life’s many losses can yield insights about loving life however brief or fragile.  We express our love through caring actions which live beyond our knowing or imagining.

You can find Emergence Magazine’s excellent interview with Susan on-line: Earth as Koan, Earth as Self.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  In this week’s class we explored spiritual cross training:  waking up and growing up.  We can wake up to the expanded state of pure awareness through meditation.  We can nurture emotional maturity through feeling emotions in the body and learning what they have to teach us.  We can restore a sense of coherence in body and mind through conscious breathing.

We can find commonalities and connect through difference by strengthening communication skills.

We heard Diana Musho Hamilton’s teachings on how the expanded states we cultivate in meditation can be applied in the world through developing interpersonal skills.  She calls this waking up and growing up.  You can see last week’s interview, Cross Training for the Mind, with podcast journalist, Dan Harris at Cross Training for the Mind.  You can find her breathing with strong emotions practice in her book, Compassionate Conversations: How to Speak and Listen From the Heart.

We heard from To Begin With, the Sweet Grass by  Mary Oliver. This poem is from the collection,  Evidence: Poems.  Mary paints pictures in words that land in our heart, flesh and bones. They move us beyond the edges of our skin, to “become a child of the clouds,” to love ourselves and to love the world.

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