Kirtan

 Thursday evening last, I attended part of this program. 

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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

Chair Yoga class

 

Deb Vingle shows us how to do each stretch...most are very easy, but I can feel my muscles doing something unfamiliar.

We only stand behind our chairs for the last exercise, with the chair available as we work on balance. Here Deb is showing us part of Warior II, and then we practiced The Tree. I really enjoy this class at the Lakeview Center upstairs on Fri. right before lunch. She leads another class before ours, downstairs with mats for back strengthening.

Today's Quote:

What gives me hope is that life unfailingly responds to the advances of love.

NIPUN MEHTA

Holding place for peace

What way can I help move our world to peace right now, this minute, wherever I am, and whatever I am doing?

Enlarge that saying/poem, and think about it, please.

If we don't pay attention and learn from history, we may repeat it!

Animated map of Nuclear Bomb history worldwide

And on the same day over at Open Culture, Dramatic Color Footage Shows a Bombed out Berlin a month after Germany's WWII defeat.

I acknowledge that its my header at this time, but I frequently change that, so this is included again!

I am posting things that speak to me of reasons 40 years ago when I named my son "Peace" (Tai, from the I Ching.)

"Love is the answer." That's really tough to hold in your emotions when you see what hate can and does do...whether in history or these days. Many people have studied the dynamics of hatred, of the spiral of destruction, and become peace makers. This is what they've concluded...love.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr said:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

So the exercise of Tonglen (from Yoga) gives me the opportunity to work on that impossible-sounding approach to the most hateful situations and people. I must start, of course, with approaching the aspects of life closest to myself and explore my own hateful feelings and see how to transform them to love. After all, we can't change other people's feelings, only our own...look at that good old 12 Step Program prayer..."to change the things I can."

But assuming that I've practiced this for a long time, I can then move my thoughts to larger areas where hatred and fear is predominate. And eventually I will wish nothing but good outcomes, peacefulness and love for all the world, and all the sad and mistaken politicians full of their own hateful narrow minded attitudes. Yep, I hope eventually to see them with love and forgiveness. (Believe me, this will take a while, maybe not even this lifetime!) 

In the meantime, I envision them in cocoons of silken threads that envelope their actions and hold them in a room of mirrors where their energy just goes right back into them. Is that too much to wish for? Well, it's a step on the path.

Here's a song by Barbra Striesand confronting Trumps lies.

Moving beyond my comfort zone

I read that somewhere...how there is only growth if I move to the edge of where I'm already comfortable, then stretch just a toe over it, maybe even take a little step.

So today, rather than doing just one thing out there...or even maybe two...I plan to do at least 4, maybe 5 activities.  Yes one is easy, then come home and relax and review the conversations, the things that were difficult, the ease with which I accomplished it.

Today after all my morning preps, I'm going to yoga at the Lakeview Center.  Getting down on the floor and moving those old bones in different postures ever so easily (groans not allowed, well that's my own rule)...where the teacher lets me do just as much as I feel able.  Then go upstairs for the Council on Aging supported lunch, which is one of my favorites, roast beef etc. That's 2.

3. Then I plan to drive to the DMV (Dept. of Motor Vehicles) in a nearby city (we don't have one in my small town) and get my drivers license renewed for another 5 years.  That is the biggest thing to do, of course.  Why?  Well this may sound petty, but I have to have my picture taken.  And that's the picture I'll have to flash any time someone wants a photo I.D.  So it's a big thing.  How shall I arrange my thinning hair?  The last time I had it done my hair was down and somewhat curly, though at least the natural shade of white.  Maybe I'll leave it down again, thus hiding my ears...which aren't all that bad.

See, my vanity is raising it's ugly head (which of course it would rather keep buried in the sand, thinking it is terribly ugly and all.)

4.  And then, after either passing the test or not, I'm coming home and will fix something for a pot luck dinner at church.  There's also a movie, but I never stay for it, because looking up at the big screen hurts my neck.  And mainly because it's the last night of the Tournament of Champions for Jeopardy. OK, I know it's a rerun from last year...but I don't remember things too well, and really don't know who won.  So that's the last activity on my list, and TV shows don't count, because I don't "go out" to do them.

So wish me luck on my 4 biggies.  So far I don't think I have a thing to take to the pot luck...so that's on my mind as I go do shower, dress, breakfast and nebulizer treatment in less than an hour.  Whizz.

Counting down 20 days to go...

I'm trying to do nebulizer while typing on laptop.  It's a bit of a circus trick.  But since I must sit here by machine, why not do a bit of chatting after reading my emails, Facebook friend's posts, and blog friends?

I've been slammed, so didn't have time to write or even compose anything yesterday.  I did a bit of research on ancestors in between people coming into the Swannanoa Valley History Museum, where I've begun work as a docent.  It was supposed to be a pretty dull job with few visitors (ha ha.)  But it's been raining solidly for 3 days now, and that means tourists have to find things to do indoors.  So where last week only 2 or 3 people would visit during a shift (before I started) this week there were 15 people in the 3-1/2 hours I was there Wed. afternoon and again 16 on Thurs. morning.

I'm still (for now) a volunteerat the Clay Studio at Black Mountain Center for the Arts.  It's right next door to the History Museum.  So when I was at the Clay Studio I didn't really do much but work glazing my own pieces.

And when I came home and had put my feet up while watching the news, I decided to take that chicken carcass out of the fridge and make some soup stock.  Then I noticed of course the last of the veggies which needed to be used to make soup. 

That meant an hour of chopping and sauteing, and picking the meat off the bones, then putting it all together.  It was delicious.  Did I mention washing the pans and dishes? That's 'cause I haven't done them yet.  They are piled in the sink and on the counter still. This afternoon I'll have time and energy for that job.

And now I'm getting ready to go to Yoga which I'm going to try to do again.  I have just been lying on top of my bed stretching a few different ways, so this will mean getting down (and up again) on the floor.  That will be the biggest challenge for me.  But I really don't want to do chair yoga.

After that class it will be about time for lunch at the Lakeview Center for Active Seniors.  We have recently lost our recreation director and assistant director, so the activities are suffering a bit.  But the Council on Aging provides these low cost nutritious meals.  They tend to be high carbs, so I have to skip some of them...have to work on what my stomach can handle.  That's the joy of aging again.

The weather has been a thing to deal with in a different way than most of us anticipated the first week of Aug. Last week we dealt with 90 degree afternoons, which usually cooled off into the 70s at night. Many people wanted to be out in the woods, and only the most hardy are geared up for constant rain and wet leaves and mud and puddles and streams.  The nights are in the 60s now, and my air conditioner doesn't kick in at all.  The choice is to either open windows and get humidity and some fresh air, or run the fans on the units so there isn't any mold thinking of growing.  With my allergies I do the latter.  I turn them off at night and run them all day, just moving air around.  I kick the a.c. on when it feels too hot inside...and that is hard when it's so cool with the rain.  Decisions, decisions.

Just a note

This will be short.  Today I'm running a bit behind.  Behind schedule, if I ever have one that is.

I've started having lunches M-F at the Lakeview Senior Center.  Have met some nice seniors and eaten at least half of what is served, which is my barometer for whether it's worth my going or not.
I'll check back with you in a few weeks on that.

I'm about to immerse myself in a new project, that I just thought I'd be co-coordinating to let a woman who's been doing the job for years have a break.  I wrote here that I needed to cut back volunteering for stuff.

Yep, I'm still doing it.  Everyone who I've disappointed in the past is looking at me hard, now.  I joined and quit two committees already in the last 6 months.

But I've also been dealing with recurring bronchitis (or something along those lines).  I have now had a couple of weeks free of it...and it's amazing to me how much energy I have.

At first I thought, maybe I'm just manic...and I've had a 6 month long phase of depressed.  Nah, this is physical, not mental/emotional.

I do remind myself to go easy.  I am following the rule to just do one new thing a day.

And of course I broke my own rule yesterday.  I rejoined a yoga class, which unfortunately I can't afford to go to every week.  But I had one great session yesterday.  And then after my lunch (of which I ate at least 75%) I walked around Lake Tomahawk.  When I passed a bench that said welcome, aren't you ready to rest, I then had some very interesting photos to take.  I'll post them over on my blog about Black Mountain...ducks....tomorrow.

Have a great day.
Here's a quote for you to consider, if you wish.

Don't let other people's opinions burn holes in your dreams.

Elsa Joy Bailey