Kirtan

 Thursday evening last, I attended part of this program. 

"
Where: UUFD Sanctuary


Who: All are welcome!
Join us for a heartfelt evening of chanting and meditating, not only for inner peace but also for a world where everyone is safe and has enough. No experience needed. We’d love to welcome you! Text questions to Anna: For a taste of UU Kirtan, check out This Video..."

From the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Durango's newsletter (with links removed). Here's the YouTube version of the video.

I have enjoyed group chanting some time ago, so this wasn't new to me. 

Unfortunately my oxygen generating machine would sometimes make little beeping noises when there were moments of meditative silence. So I left early after the third chanting began. 

Anna, the leader, said she'd spent 20 years in an Ashram (didn't say which one.) I have friends who have studied many years with the Kripalu Yoga techniques, as well as my having been to several of the weekend workshops they gave in Florida. My chair yoga teacher at the Senior Center in Black Mountain has Kripalu training, but that didn't include any chanting of course!

Sanskrit words, with English meanings were printed on song sheets, but I preferred just the song and response method which was used throughout. It is definitely energizing. And I am so glad I went. I'd say I moved my energy from the low red zone up a few notches!

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Another spiritual tradition offers this...

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“And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.”

Maya Angelou

The Mountain Meadows Massacre, Sept. 7-11, 1857

Not only were the elements of survival there for settlers to deal with as they traveled by wagon trains across the vast western spaces, there were political and religious and cultural conflicts between the different peoples.

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 On September 7, 1857 the Mountain Meadows Massacre began when Mormon settlers slaughtered most members of a peaceful, emigrant wagon train. The massacre was a series of attacks on the Baker-Fancher emigrant wagon train in southern Utah. The massacre culminated September 11, 1857 resulting in the mass slaughter of the emigrant party by members of the Utah Territorial Militia from the Iron County district and purportedly aided by Native American allies, though this is widely disputed.

The militia was composed of southern Utah’s Mormon settlers who intended to leave no witnesses and thus prevent reprisals – thus they killed all the adults and older children – some 120 men, women and children in total sparing but 17 children – all younger than seven. The wagon train was mostly families from Arkansas bound for California. (In 2007 the 150th anniversary of the massacre was commemorated at the meadows with some 400 people, including many descendants of the slain, in attendance. In 2011 the site of the slaughter was designated a National Historic Landmark.

Posted by Erika Quesenbery Sturgill on FaceBook Sept. 7, 2026

 

Commentor Jon Tanner said:

 "There were hard feelings for the way people of Missouri-Arkansas had treated the Mormons when they lived in Missouri. Gov Bogs of Missouri had issued an Extermination Order. Mobs had killed members; homes and Farms were taken. The Mormons had been chased out of the area."
Slaughter by members of the Utah Territorial Militia from the Iron County district.

Commenter Ken Russell said:

 sA

"That is John Lee on the left, the only attacker held responsible for the massacre, sitting on his coffin waiting to be executed by firing squad."

Commenter Skip Myers said:

 
"John D. Lee's execution and the only one caught and brought to court. The other 8 were never caught and they changed their names and were gone into oblivion."

The monument to the victims in southwest Utah.

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A lot more information can be found on Wikipedia. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_Massacre

Survivor Nancy Saphrona Huff (4) was taken away along with her family's possessions by John Willis to reside at his house until she was returned to relatives in Arkansas two years later.

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Sharing with Sepia Saturday. 

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I'll be back tomorrow with more stories that are a bit less gruesome!

On aging

 I've been enjoying Lloyd Kahn's substack writing for about a year now.

And he's definitely a character! A builder, archietct, publisher, adventurer, and good voice for many of the things I value...aging well for one. He's 91.

On his substack he said:

Holy cow!

I get a lot of requests to do videos, podcasts, interviews, etc. these days, And I turn most of them down. But I decided to do this one because Sierra Clarke, who does videos on older people, said she’d skateboard with me and also take a mud bath.

So I spent the day with Sierra, a film crew who flew in from Denver, and her assistant.

But I wasn’t prepared for this. Over 2 million views, 3000 comments, 40,000 ”likes…”

I hope you enjoy watching them...and fast forward through any parts that are boring to you...I did.

Incidentally his substack is called: 

Live From California with Lloyd Kahn

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At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.

JEAN HOUSTON

Precariousness of our lives

 This week has moved toward the 25th anniversary of the attacks on the USA by terrorists.

Of course it can happen again, even with all the safeguards Homeland Security has put in place.

Of course with a mad man in the White House, he is asking for something extreme to happen.

But each day I wake up and am grateful for the life I have. Clean air.

Oh you don't know how important that is...just take a deep breath and think about how hard it might be if you coughed with each intake.

And clean water. 

From the internet

Gratitude list continues...

And homes. And food. And neighbors who look out for each other.

And friendships across the miles.

And the internet which connects us to each other quickly, effortlessly.

Phones. Cars. Planes.

OK, so much I am grateful for.

Boom, 9/11 happened.

Here's short documentary about the people who escaped Manhattan Island on 9/11 by water, narrated by Tom Hanks.

More people were transported by water that day than in the evacuation of Dunkirk.

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And if it’s true we are alone, we are alone together, the way blades of grass are alone, but exist as a field.

ROSEMERRY WAHTOLA TROMMER