The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  Today we explored ourselves as nature.  We reflected on the intimate relationships between breath, body and the natural world around us.  We sustain each other.  We breathe and live.  We drink in the world through magical senses. We sleep and dream.

Our love for Earth inspires us to bring our caring to her preservation. In his talk, A Primordial Covenant of Relationship, Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee writes:

At the heart of that ancient primordial relationship that existed, there was love. Not the Hallmark variety of love, not even the human variety of love, but a much vaster, more ancient, and simpler form of love. A covenant of love between the human and the living Earth.

We heard Robinson Jeffers invitation to “uncenter our minds from ourselves.”  In his poem Carmel Point he juxtaposes Earth time with modern man’s time and its devastating effects on Earth.

We were inspired by Ben Bushill’s beautiful prayer that we “may we save ourselves and our world – love by love.”  Ben is a poet and spoken word performer.  You can find more of his words, films and music at BenBushill.com.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  On this Mother’s Day we explored widening our kinship with others.  We contemplated the many who have nurtured and loved us.  We imagined the many forms of ancestral inheritance we carry in our lives today.  We also contemplated what we would be offering others as ancestors-to-be.

We drew inspiration from Susan Moon’s essay Grandmother Mind.  Susan offers a creative and eloquent exploration of the many meanings of honoring our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers.  She poses questions about who we consider to be our kin.  Finally she shares her own experience of grandmothering under the challenging conditions of pandemic imposed isolation. Susan is an accomplished writer, editor and teacher in the Soto Zen tradition.  Her compassion and humor shine in her writings.

We heard Joy Harjo’s beautiful poem Remember.  Her lyrical lines ask us to remember our human and more than human ancestors.  The repeating evocation to re-member seems to affirm our wholeness and inter-being.

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