The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored how gratitude enriches our lives.  It helps us to hold our joys and sorrows.  Shared gratitude brings us together and helps us respond to life’s challenges.

We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s  book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love.  In his chapter on gratitude, Oren reminds us that “injustices may never end, we must stop, now and then to celebrate to renew ourselves connect with one another and keep going.  Gratitude forms the foundation of this renewal.”

Oren quoted Dr. Bayo Akomolafe  – a philosopher, psychologist, professor, and poet. Dr. Akomolafe is a Global Senior Fellow of University of California’s (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute, where he guides Forum members in rethinking and reimagining the collective work towards social justice.  Bayo reminds us that  “genuine gratitude opens the heart to all of life – the hurt and grief alongside the blessings.”

Our guided meditation included Brother David Steindl-Rast’s prose for Living a Grateful Day.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored the role of wonder in our lives. In wonder we are open and deeply connected to the present.  We step out of the busyness of our lives and become intimate with the natural world.  We can appreciate how we are an expression of nature and be moved to change.

We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s  book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love. In Oren invites us to appreciate and cultivate wonder in our lives.  Wonder is often a doorway to realizing our inter-being with all of life.

We heard from poet turned marine biologist Rachel Carson’s book:  The Sense of Wonder.  Rachel urges us to help children keep their innate curiosity and wonder alive. “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder,” writes Carson, “he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”

We heard from marine biologist Andreas Weber.  In his book, The Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling and the Metamorphosis of Science, explores a new understanding of life as “poetic ecology.” He explains why deep wonder, romantic connection cost foster the feeling of being at home in nature

We heard Denise Levertov’s poem Sojourns in the Parallel World.  This poem describes how our preoccupations draw us away from realizing our inter-relationship with the natural world. Letting ourselves “drift” into nature’s rhythms can offer us wondrous experience.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored the restorative experience of rest.  Appreciating the body as a precious partner can restore the wonder of being alive to our hearts and minds.  It can help us to sustain balance and enable us to be present with ourselves and others.

We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s  book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love.  Oren writes about the restorative benefits of rest.  He encourages us to examine our relationship with being and doing.  He reminds us that there is no action without rest.

We heard from Soto Zen Priest and Unitarian Minister, Reverend Zenshin Florence Caplow’s Tricycle Magazine article, Dancing in the Dark Fields: the Teachings of Illness.  In this moving essay Zenshin Caplow describes living with chronic illness, dancing with uncertainty and welcoming joy.

We heard from the  Thich Nhat Hanh Lion’s Roar article, Resting in the River.  In this article, Thay, describes how recognizing the habit energy of struggle can help us to release it.  He encourages us to open our lives by bringing our awareness to the wonder of the present moment.

We heard John O’Donohue’s Blessing for One Who Is Exhausted from his collected Blessings.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. On this Mother’s Day we can take joy in reflecting on all the ways we been nurtured and have nurtured others.  We explored how mindfulness can enrich our lives with joy.

We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s  book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love.  Oren encourages us to bring mindfulness to the joys in our lives.

We heard from Jeanne Corrigal’s dharma talk:  Joy:  An Inner Wellspring. Jeanne is the guiding teacher for the Saskatoon Insight Meditation Community. Jeanne’s teaching is gently humorous and down to earth.  This talk draws on the many kinds of joy that can enrich our lives.  Jeanne also explains how the intentional cultivation of joy can be the gateway that leads to deeper states of calm and concentration.

We hard four haiku’s from Rosemerry Wahtola Trimmer.  Rosemerry freely gifts her poetry at her Hundred Falling Veils web-site.  Three simple lines express the joys that mindfulness makes accessible in every day live.

We drew from the tenth chapter of Kathleen Dowling Singh’s book, The Grace in Aging: Awaken As You Grow Older. Kathleen reminds us that devoted practice and sustained attention create the conditions for the experiences of contented ease and joy.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We explored how  resolve can bring aspirations to life.  This is a “heart training” or caring for  ourselves and our communities.  We are creatures born of causes and conditions.  We will all die some day.  Our actions and their consequences are what will touch the lives of  humans and the more-than-human world.  No effort is too small.

We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s  book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love.  Oren explores the importance of bringing resolve to our aspirations.  He describes his approach to resolve as “heart-training” with practical steps we can take in our daily lives.

We heard Mushim Ikeda’s views on resolving to bring our actions to the people with whom we share daily life.  You can hear her inspiring poet’s voice in the Lions’ Roar podcast program:  Fear, Forgiveness & Self Care.  Mushim is a poet, social activist and teacher at East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California.

We heard from writer Koun Franz’ essay, Buddhism’s “Five Remembrances” Are Wake-Up Calls for Us All.   Koun Franz is a Soto Zen priest. He leads practice at Thousand Harbours Zen in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  We focused on the fifth remembrance concerning our actions and their continuing consequences.

We hard Maria Popova’s poem:  Spell Against Indifference.  This spell brings our attention to the fragility and impermanence of this beautiful world.  Even appreciating the rain can help us remember “all we know of heaven.”

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored ways of recognizing integrity.  We considered how we develop it in relationship. We learn it and we teach it.  We support it in one another through practice.  Integrity calls us to appreciate our innate goodness and also to recognize the ways we may cause harm.  Poet Micky Scottbey Jones encourages us to “call each other to more truth and love.”

We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s  book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love.  Oren shares ways of enacting integrity including:  Recognizing unhelpful mental habits of judgment, complaint or resentment.  Investigating what evokes this thinking and cultivating self compassion, generosity or patience.  He also recommends that we amplify our innate goodness by recognizing it and directing it outward toward others.

We heard Micky Scottbey Jones’ inspirational poem: Invitation to Brave Space.  She reminds us that:  “We all carry scars and we have all caused wounds. . . . We have the right to start somewhere and continue to grow. We have the responsibility to examine what we think we know.”

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We explored ways to cultivate empathy by practicing presence, recalling our intention and attuning to ourselves and others.  Self attunement can help us to stay centered by having a sense of a “strong back,” a metaphor for being grounded.   We ground ourselves while remaining flexible, adaptable, and open to change.  We are willing to see the world as clearly as possible.  In having a sense of “soft front”, we resolve to stay open to life.

We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s  book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love. Oren writes “mindfulness, curiosity, courage and wise attention all support empathy, opening our eyes to the lives of others.  . . . Healing conversations . . . explode our assumptions about the limits of empathy and forgiveness and they reveal the radical potential of restorative practices to transform our justice system.”

We heard from Brene Brown’s essay, Not Looking Away Thoughts on the Israel-Hamas War.  Brene conducted interviews with members of three non-violent peace movements who are working to create the political will to end the occupation and create a way for Palestinians and Israelis to live together in dignity and equality.  Brene’s site has resources for understanding the long standing conflict in the Middle East and non-violent movements working for peace and justice.  I deeply appreciate her courage in facing this suffering, asking  hard questions and being transparent about the limits of her understanding.

She interviewed Rob Damelin and Ali Abut Awwad,  representatives of Parent’s Circle Family Forum.  PCFF is a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization of more than 600 families, all of whom have lost an immediate family member to the ongoing conflict. Their goal is to create sustained peace between the two nations by promoting reconciliation and nonviolence.  Taghyeer, which means change, is working to build a national nonviolent movement of Palestinian people.

She interviewed Rula Daood and Alon-Lee Green, representatives of Standing Together.  Standing Together is a grassroots movement of Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in pursuit of peace, equality, social and climate justice.

In exploring the depth of our caring for ourselves and each other we drew on the teachings of Roshi Joan Halifax.  Her article, Discovery at the Edge of Empathy, and her book, Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet, explore how we can work skillfully with deep empathy by tempering our emotions with mindfulness and compassion.

Doctor, teacher and writer Rachel Naomi Remen says that the purpose of every life is to grow in wisdom and to learn how to love  better.

We heard Anne Hillman’s poem, We Look with Uncertainty. The poem, from her collection Awakening the Energies of Love: Discovering Fire for the Second Time.  The poem is a “dare” to be human in our vulnerability and openness.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.   We explored equanimity, one of our four essential qualities including loving kindness, compassion and altruistic joy.  We can draw on the wisdom of our grandmother’s heart to respond to our experience with these qualities.  Our commitment to the practice – to try, to fail and try again is what transforms the grain of reactivity into the pearl of equanimity.

We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s  book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love. Oren writes about equanimity as a centering stabilizing resource in our lives.  It enables us to stay right on the edge of reactivity.  We stay long enough to gain perspective and consider an appropriate response.

We drew inspiration from Roshi Joan Halifax’s essay, Equanimity: Walking the Tight Rope with a Grandmother’s Heart.  Having a grandmother’s heart enables us “to love all equally.”  Roshi is committed to this practice while knowing she will fail.  She and many others continue working at this every day.

We heard poet Alison Luterman’s poem: Because Even the Word Obstacle is an Obstacle.  This is a somewhat whimsical poem that brings the practice into every day life – the crowded lane in the public swimming pool.  We can visualize the images of those who are “in the way” as they become the way, the way of all beings.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored how our ability to be with what is – our patience – can help us in our struggles.  It is a slow process of cultivating loving awareness around what needs healing.  Slow time in loving awareness can help the heart to open and the mind to clear.

We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s  book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love. Oren writes about patience as a practice of being with the heart of our struggles.  We do this by recognizing reactivity or tension.  We then create the conditions that will allow us the space and time needed to move toward clarity and healing.

We heard Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem, Lumbricus patentia.  Rosemerry offers many of her poems and writings  on her web-site A hundred Falling Veils.  On a troubled day, Rosemerry wants to be like an earthworm giving itself over to the tunneling motions of creating more space.  She yearns for the constancy and slow time the heart needs to open.  Patiently being with what needs tending.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored ways of finding ease while caring for those in our web of being.  Our calm and caring presence can be a source of healing.  It begins by finding the still point in our thoughts words and deeds.  In stillness we can surrender our doing to the experience of being.  In the ease of being we can offer loving awareness and caring presence.

We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s  book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love. Oren writes about finding ease by appreciating the moments in which “there is nothing special you need to do, fix, accomplish, get or have.” He encourages to take time to be still even in the midst of serving others.  Our calm presence can be the beginning of healing.

We heard Julia Fehrenbacher’s poem, The Most Important Thing.  Julia’s writing reflects her intention to “. . . be as present, as here as possible . . .  This being here is a constant practice, a practice that begins, and begins again, in each and every moment. And it is everything. Everything real and true is here – never there, never yesterday, never tomorrow. This is something I forget, and sometimes remember, every single day.”

We heard Matty Weingast’s poem Grandma Sumana. This poem is from Matty’s book, The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns, a reimagining of the Therīgāthā.  This poem is about a life of “looking after others” and warming in a blanket of every loving kindness offered along the way.

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