The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We reflected on how our basic human warmth, our loving kindness can manifest in caring action.  We are only a screen away from the world’s suffering and from those who are working hard to alleviate that suffering.  Poet Amanda Gorman:

May we not only mourn, but give:
May we not only hurt, but act;

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 eloquently about how loving kindness can be a force for caring action in the world.

We heard from Nicholas Kristor’s New York Times’ Opinion Essay, ‘People Are Hoping That Israel Nukes Us So We Get Rid of This Pain.’

We heard from the New York Times’ report:  Aid from Jose Andres’s World Central Kitchen Could Depart for Gaza Within Days.

We spoke about the work chef Jose Andres and his World Central Kitchen are doing in bringing meals to Gaza.   You can learn more about Jose and his team by viewing Ron Howard’s documentary, We Feed People.

Poet and author, David Whyte, speaks of love’s gravity in his book, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

We heard Amanda Gorman’s poem, Hymns for the Hurting.  Amanda’s young voice seems to speak on behalf of people who are suffering today.  People who are caught in the trauma of living in conflict zones.  Her Hymn calls us to transform hate into love.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  In exploring renunciation we practiced with letting go and opening to.  I  appreciate Oren’s encourage to ask for help.  I am so grateful to have people I trust to help me in those moments when I’m contracting around a difficult experience.  I also ask them to help me to open my heart when I know I’ve closed it.

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 renunciation through the lenses of personal, inter-personal and collective.  He writes:  “Renunciation allows us to embrace the relative and to open beyond it.  By releasing the tendency to contract around anything, we realize a wider perspective, very much including the diversity at the core of a just society.  Renunciation creates the possibility of holding multiple even conflicting perspectives simultaneously.”

Oren quoted Roshi Bernie Glassman, founder of Zen Peacemakers.   You can see a beautiful five minute video about Bernie and his work by following this link  You can read Zen Is All of Life: Remembering Roshi Bernie Glassman, the Lion’s Roar article about Bernie’s legacy.  You can see a funny picture of him, his dog and his cigar here too.

We heard Madronna Holden’s poem, Ask the River.  I discovered the poem recently published by Kosmos Journal.  Her site is an adventurous compilation of writings on world views and values, ecofeminism, folklore and poetry.  Have a cup of tea here and be delighted!

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  This week we explored courage.  Courage, in its many forms, is an expression of heart wisdom.  It enables us to feel the most difficult moments in life.  It sparks the willingness to stay with good trouble.  It illuminates the moment to let go.  It matures as a loving presence we can offer 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 believes “it takes courage to be with things as they are, to turn toward and be with the truth of each moment.  Courage begins with one moment of awareness and the possibility of taking a pause.”  A deep breath and a sigh feels good too.

We heard John O’Donohue’s Blessing for Courage. from his collection, Benedictus. John’s work  offers comfort and encouragement for the milestones and transitions of life. It reminds us that our relationships with one another are crucial to our emotional and spiritual well-being.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored the transformative energy of curiosity.  Offering ourselves and other curiosity can be liberating.  We have the possibility of experiencing what it is like to be undefended and all that brings.  Think about that.

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 believes:  “True curiosity allows us to see beyond structures, messages and roles we have been handed by society and history – roles that can feel so innate we may have never examined them.  Curiosity holds a mirror up to nature, questioning what we believe and why, how we behave and why.  . . . This curiosity is radical.”  This is a liberating invitation!

We drew from the tenth chapter of Kathleen Dowling Singh’s book, The Grace in Aging: Awaken As You Grow Older.  Kathleen observes:  “Even if most of the moments of our lives were lost in the dream of self, of form only, we’ve all spent some time in presence – the experience of formless awareness. . . . To forget the self and its pettiness, even for a moment, is liberation from tension, from the perpetual stress of maintaining the self’s boundaries.  To forget the self . . . is to actually show up, open and embracing, in the present moment’s play of form and formlessness. . . . our hunger for awareness greater than this small self, bound by birth and death, can still be ours to fulfill and to experience and to abide in.”

We heard Padraig O’Tuama’s poem, How to Be Alone.   You can hear Padraig reading his poem in Leo G. Franchi’s Poetry Film.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We reflected on the different causes for wisdom to arise.  It can develop by bringing mindfulness to our inner lives and by deeply engaging with others.   Both touch on an essential vulnerability that David Whyte describes as “that first vulnerability of being found, of being heard and of being seen.”  Our own careful attention and input from others can be causes for wisdom.

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:  “Wisdom understands . . .  how suffering arises and ceases.  . . . it understands the natural laws of the heart and world and sensing what’s needed, expresses itself as compassionate engagement.”

We heard David Brooks’ thoughts on wisdom.  David writes about how to be a wise person in the ending chapter of How to Know a Person the Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.  He values the wisdom we develop and practice in relationship.  A wise person “looks with the eyes of compassion and understanding, will see complex souls, suffering and soaring, navigating life as best they can. . . . [A wise person will] give those around around them the sense that they are right there with them . . . sharing what they are going through. , , ,  {They] will maintain this capacious loving attention even as the callousness of the world rises around them.”

We heard David Whyte’s poem, A Seeming Stillness.  The poem can be found in the Essentials collection published in 2020.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored concentration as “just and loving attention.”  We aspired to extend this quality of attention from our “grandmother’s heart” and to see ourselves and others with “grandmother’s eyes.”

We heard from David Brooks’ New York Times essay, How to Save a Sad, Lonely, Angry and Mean Society.  David encourages us to see, feel and understand our shared humanity.  Part of our salvation is extending “just and loving” attention to one another.

We read from the Roshi Joan Halifax essay, Grandmother’s Heart.  She observes that “life is in need of balance and life is in the balance.” Roshi urges us “to find that immoveable center, that plumb line that aims toward gravity, the wise elder within us. Let’s find that strong back that supports our soft front, and let’s find or call out our grandmother’s heart.”

We heard Dane Anthony’s poem Right Here.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We focused on concentration and what the mind needs to cultivate wholehearted concentration.  When we bring our heart’s awareness to concentration we see that it is a devotional practice.  We are moved to create the conditions in which concentration can naturally arise.  What a relief to experience the ease of whole hearted concentration.

We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s new book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love.  Oren describes concentration as a “collected and stable heart.” He believes concentration arises when the heart is interested and at ease.

We heard Professor Gloria Mark remark about creating pauses to rest the mind periodically throughout the day.  I heard these remarks in her discussion with Ezra Klein, Tired? Distracted? Burned Out?  Gloria is author of Attention Span A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity.

We heard from poet Jane Hirshfield’s essay The Mind of Concentration from her book Nine Gates:  Entering the Mind of Poetry. In this essay Jane explores the many dimensions of concentration: “penetrating, unified, and focused, yet also permeable and open.”

We heard Madronna Holden’s poem, Indwelling.  I discovered the poem recently published by Kosmos Journal.  Her site is an adventurous compilation of writings on world views and values, ecofeminism, folklore and poetry.  Have a cup of tea here and be delighted!

Finally we heard a brief quotation from chaplain and author Lynn Casteel Harper.  You can read more of her views on remembering and inclusivity in the December Sun Magazine interview, Speak Memory:  New Ways of Understanding Dementia.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored how mindfulness can help us navigate in the world.  We reflected on how we need each other to create the space of loving awareness.  We need each other to bring mindfulness into its mature expression as heartfulness.   I am so deeply grateful for the meaningful conversations I’ve had with dear ones this week.

We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s new book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love.  We reflected on how the awareness of life’s impermanence can help us be more present in the world.  This presence is integral to deep conversation and helpful action in the world.

We heard William Stafford’s poem, Ritual to Read Each Other.  The poem encourages us to reflect on how we understand ourselves and others.  Patterns and assumptions can misguide and mislead us.  The poem speaks about our need of each other in finding our way in life.  Paradoxically, we need to find one another so that we might not lose ourselves.   You can find a wonderful exposition of the poem’s meaning at the Growing Edge podcast program, A Ritual to Read Each Other.  This is a conversation between musician Carrie Newcomer and writer, teacher, activist Parker Palmer.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We explored mindfulness as “heartfulness.”  We cultivated embodied presence and invited the heart wisdom to reveal itself.

We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s new book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love.  We are explored the quality of mindfulness.

We drew on the work of John Prendergast.  John has been a spiritual teacher and psychotherapist.  We drew from his book, The Deep Heart:  Our Portal to Presence.   “The ‘deep heart’ is John’s term for the subtle center of emotional and energetic sensitivity, relational intimacy, profound inner knowing, and wholeness found within our hearts.”

We heard Rosemerry Trommer Wahtola’s poem, How.  Rosemerry generously offers a daily poem through her site:  A Hundred Falling Veils.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We practiced “right effort” by creating the conditions in which  we can attune to our inner wisdom.  Settling into embodied presence can help us find freedom and ease even in our heartfelt aspirations. We can invite living questions to help us go deeper to find those beginnings quietly born.  May this new year bring peace to all beings.

We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s new book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love.  We focused on how attention, aspiration and energy enable us to establish the settledness of being in which to hear our inner wisdom.

We also drew inspiration from Insight Meditation teacher, Gil Fronsdal’s teaching.  Gil and his fellow teachers offer a library of talks, guided meditations and courses through AudioDharma. You can experience his talk, Desire for Right Effort, in this archive. You can hear his exploration of “What Wants to be Born” in his talk, Return to Your Center.

John O’Donohue’s poem For a New Beginning is from his collection, Anam Cara. Anam Cara is a phrase that refers to the Celtic concept of the “soul friend” in religion and spirituality..

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