What is the thing you love most? What will you do to save it? If you had the chance, what is one thing you would do?

Back off from that extreme. What is one thing you love at all? What would you do to help it: how would you offer help, comfort, assistance, encouragement or strength?

Every being on earth affects each other being, for good or ill.

I decided to travel less – for the health of the planet and my own – but last night I was on a plane again. For someone who was traveling 2-3 times a month, traveling once every few months is a big improvement. Perhaps not enough, but it is something. En route to teach in Maryland this weekend, I’m stopping off in NYC because an Occupy Wall Street activist asked me to come teach In New York. She said people needed succor after the hurricane. So I am here to do two benefits for the hardworking people of Occupy Sandy who can still use our help. It doesn’t feel like much – four or so hours of teaching and a train ride to my other gig – but I can do it, so I shall.

(What helps you open heart and soul enough to fall in love?)

Just checking Twitter on the airplane, my heart widened. I saw many things that inspire me: I saw men around the world fighting for the rights of the women they love. I saw communities gathered to comfort the families of children lost to racism, classism, and grave injustice. I saw the cisgendered supporting the transgendered and vice versa. I saw artists painting, making music, and dancing. I saw people planting gardens in the neighborhoods that wealth forgot. I saw people struggling to free themselves from their own emotional chains. I saw communities organizing to face off foreclosures, or to purchase medical debt. I saw students saying “education is a right!”

My heart fills with all of this. I feel grateful. I fall in love. Again and again, I fall in love.

How about you? What small acts of connection are you doing this week? How are you acting, or preparing to act, to bring healing, kindness, love, or justice to this world?

(What helps you open heart and soul enough to fall in love?)

I send you love, no matter what you are doing, no matter where in the world you are.

———————–

The benefit classes are “Spirituality in Times of Crisis” at CRS, 123 4th St, Wednesday at 7:30 pm and “Manifestation: The Powers of the Sphinx” Thursday at Catland. Please see my calendar.

We do not live in isolation.

“How do you heal yourself and help others?” I asked. The answers poured in:

“by building my mind, body, and community every single day.”

“trusting my self to stand tall and reach out instead of within.”

“by speaking my truth as lovingly as possible.”

“Quiet meditation & working on things like afghans for veterans stuck in the hospital

and small beanies & blankets for babies stuck in Children’s Hospital to help me heal.”

When we work toward our own healing, everything changes. Things ebb and flow – there will be times when we retreat from our interactions with the world in order to do some deep re-assessment or healing work that can’t be done during too much engagement. But then we cycle back out: we bring our healing selves into the world of change, into the world of joy, into the world of pain.

You will see from the few answers I selected – and I simply chose the first that came in – that this looks and feels different for each of us. In helping others, we heal ourselves. In working toward our own healing, we increase our capacity to help others. We also simply bring more healing into the world. That matters.

I won’t list everything that feels like it is going wrong in the world: all you have to do is check out the BBC, or Al Jazeera, or your Twitter feed to see it. I just want to remind us all that everything we do to counter injustice, dis-ease, hatred, or isolation, is a victory for the impetus of healing. 

The personal is political. The political is personal. We are interwoven. Re-member.

In the trailer for the movie Starhawk is trying to make of the Fifth Sacred Thing, Maya Greenwood asks: “How do we become stronger healers than they are, killers?”

How indeed?

We show up every day. We start with ourselves, we continue in community.  We start in community, and continue with ourselves.

Today, I will work. Then I will gather together bright ribbons.

I will go out to the plaza in a vibrant, art-filled, violence-torn town and fashion a May Pole for workers, for anarchists, for the homeless, for students, for socialists, and for those who care for justice. These are my people.

Together, we shall dance.

Today, as a Pagan, I celebrate Beltane – a festival of cleansing, creativity, burgeoning, and the joyous renewal of sex. This is a happy day, a gorgeous day. I honor the season, the strengthening sun, and the ancestors who danced to wake the fields.

Today, as an Anarcho-Socialist, I celebrate May Day – a festival of choosing autonomy, of choosing justice, of choosing to support those who work hard each day, rather than supporting those who rule the land through use of cash. I honor my working class family. I honor my activist friends.

Bonfires will be lit today. Marches will be marched. May Poles will be danced today. Workers will ask for equity, for justice, for a living wage and a good life shared by all.

Today, all over the world, people will march for immigrant rights, for a livable wage, and to commemorate the Haymarket Protests, and the Pullman Strike.

Today, I will honor Dorothy Day who founded the Catholic Worker on May Day 80 years ago.

Today, I will honor Cora Anderson, who died in that liminal space between Walpurgisnacht and May Day, 8 years ago.

These two great women, one whom I knew, and one whom I did not, both taught me many things.

Today, I will fashion a May Pole – tying ribbons to a flag pole in a plaza before a march to raise the minimum wage. Today, I will ask the people of the plaza to join the dance.

May your day be blessed. May justice rise. May we sing together, the traditional song of May:

“Unite, and unite, and let us all unite, for summer is a coming today…”

Happy International Have Sex With a Worker Day*. I hope it is a good one. Bread and roses, everyone. Bread and roses.

—-

This has long been my name for this day. Beltane + May Day = International Have Sex With a Worker Day 

What rests upon the altar of your life? What are you making sacred with your presence?

Each morning I light a candle and I pray. I fill the kettle and meditate while the water heats. After time on the bench, I prepare hot water and lemon for my first drink of the day.

Someone gifted me with a cup last year. It is simple. Elegant. White on the inside, black outside. No handle. It is meant to be cradled. Inside the rim is written “Rituals…”. The name of a shop in Holland, this bit of advertising reminds me that yes, my life is an altar. Each morning, I squeeze half a lemon into the cup. The wooden juicer fits just so into my palm, the other hand cups the bright half round as the juice spills into the bottom of the white interior. I can be present with the lemon, the juicer, and the cup. I can be present as I lift the kettle and hot water pours out, diffusing the juice.

All of these actions are as simple as the cup. Ordinary. All of these actions become sacred by the fact that I am present and paying attention. My mind isn’t wandering in its list of things to do. I’m not wanting to do anything except be with water, lemon, and cup.

What rests upon the altar of your life? What are you making sacred with your presence?

We can infuse any activity with the scent of the sacred. How does our body touch the chair, how are hands and arms connected to our shoulders? We are present with our bodies as we type – trying to communicate across great distances. What happens when we pass a tree? Do we drink it in with our eyes? Do we say hello to the sparrows? We are present as we walk to work, or lunch, or home.

There is no place that is not holy ground. When we are present – oriented to East and West, North and South, oriented in and out – we find the sacred waiting, everywhere.

What practices connect you? 

Last week, one of my spiritual direction clients was talking about resisting practice because of feeling so angry about life and the world.

I suggested taking the anger to the practice mat and then said, “Don’t deny yourself that which supports you because you don’t feel perfect.” 

We can give ourselves permission to call upon the very things that help us whether we feel at our best or at our worst. We can give ourselves permission to call upon the very things that help us whether the world feels like it is falling apart around us or as though everything is sunshine and strawberries.

I’ve said it before, and will continue to repeat it: Practice Makes Possible.

When we practice, we have a little more centeredness with which to face the world. When we practice, we connect enough to make better decisions. When we practice, we can better find the strength with which to serve. When we practice, we can remember that the world is varied and so are we. We can breathe it all in. We can exhale. We cannot carry the world, but we can shoulder one small part of it. Practice helps.

We may never feel perfect. The world may never feel perfect. The reality is, imperfection is part of what makes us whole. Wholeness is perfect, even in all of its flaws. Things are as they are. We change them by changing our relationship to them, and this starts inside ourselves. If I make a subtle shift within, that adjusts all of my relationships on out: to family, friends, to world events, to the kid on the street, to the person in line, to bombings and war, and injustice, and explosions, and music wafting toward me on Spring air.

Take it to the mat. The altar. The bench. The studio. Take it to the walk. The bike ride. The conversation.

Find the support you need. Please. We need you well supported. 

This morning, I opened curtains onto a gorgeous, sun filled day. My head filled with “What a Wonderful World” as sung by Joey Ramone. I felt filled with joy.

Then I flashed on the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, being taken from their fellowship, desperate, hungry, fighting their guards with broom handles. My heart cracked.

To the altar I went to sit with both of these. Sun streaming in behind me, I gathered as much of the world into my consciousness as possible. Breathing, I opened my heart to sit with joy and deep sorrow, with beauty and with fear, with art and injustice. With all the processes of life that my mind can barely comprehend.

We are wounded. We are healing. We are in love. We feel afraid.

I don’t know how to fix what sometimes feels badly broken. I’ll stay with it. I shall also continue to embrace the Divine Twins in every moment, at every turn. As I wrote in my article on Margaret Thatcher: We are Divine Twins, locked in struggle, seeking our way toward love’s embrace. 

I’m with you in the struggle. I’m with you, here, in love. 

How are you today?

EDIT: I wrote this on Sunday and it feels all the more relevant today, Tuesday April 16, 2013. The bombings at the Boston Marathon yesterday left three dead and close to 200 wounded, and bombings in Iraq left 50 dead and close to 300 wounded. People also rushed in to help. People offered prayers or gave blood. The Divine Twins walk among us, as we lash out in grief and anger, as we mourn, and as we seek ways to comfort one another. 

I’m off to the soup kitchen now, trying to do my small part to tip the balance toward love and justice. I’m thinking well of you, whoever you are, reading my words today.

The Divine Twins are ever with us. Here is my reflection on the death of Margaret Thatcher, the state of the world, and our part in that. Please read the whole piece over at the Huffington Post:

We are divided for love’s sake. We are divided for the chance of union. We won’t get there until we remember that we wish to become whole again. We create the cosmos together, you and I. Every time we torture and train toward torture, we forget that we are bound in a holy embrace. Every time a drone strike is ordered, a girl is raped, or another young man killed, we forget that the same molecules infuse our breath. All this is war against ourselves. All this is war.

We are Divine Twins, locked in struggle, seeking our way toward love’s embrace.

I am Margaret Thatcher and Steven Biko. I am Ronald Reagan and Daniel Ortega. I am Barack Obama and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. I am every soldier at Fort Benning and every person camped under a highway. I am Oscar Grant, Alan Blueford and Gary King. I am Gwen Araujo and Matthew Shepard. I am the ones who killed them all…

Until the prayers of spiritual people become our actions, there will be no lasting changes in this world. The struggle of the Twins will overpower their embrace. Fear will forget connection.

Blessed be.

It is important sometimes to take on the challenges I say I hate. These sorts of challenges teach me things I just won’t learn otherwise. I avoided sitting practice for years, telling people it just wasn’t for me. Reality was, I hadn’t much tried. When I finally sat myself down on a cushion, I hated it. I squirmed, ached, shouted, and struggled for years. As a consequence, sitting, breathing and observing became one of my greatest teachers. Yoga is likely the same. I’ve taken classes infrequently over the years and have a brief home practice I do almost daily. I don’t push myself with that, doing instead what feels satisfying. That is often a good way to practice – doing what feels satisfying. Yet it also doesn’t take me past my comfort zone.

To go beyond my comfort zone, I sometimes need the challenge of a teacher.

Now, I want to say that while I find it important to do things my personality will tell you I hate, I’m not doing them to punish myself. I do them out of curiosity, and because I recognize that something in me does like the activity, or is at least stretched by it. My body welcomed much of yesterday’s class, even as it rebelled against some poses. Mostly, it was my mind that didn’t like it. That alone teaches me something. I felt better after the class, too, in a way I don’t get to at home. The push of the class, and the instruction by the teacher, helped.

I do things I say I hate because I learn that way. I don’t really hate these things, that is just emotional hyperbole. I would actually say I don’t hate anything. What my mind means when it throws that word out is a this: “I’m really not good at this activity. I feel ungraceful. I just can’t do it properly. It burns and feels uncomfortable. These sensations are not things that I like. I would rather stop now.” That litany is subtext to the constriction I feel before I find center once again, breathe, and try to soften. Breathe, and try to make the small adjustment. Breathe, and simply try to remain present to the moment. Yoga brings me to prayer and connection in a different way than usual. This helps me.

Curiosity, breath, and presence can take me through almost any challenge. Those three things ensure that I will learn something, often something very subtle and important. I follow the lead of my instincts that tell me “Go to class. Now” even when I would rather stay home and read a book. That inner voice is the voice of my teacher. It leads me to the teaching all around me. My life is better for it. My life is better, even when part of me complains again, “I hate this.” My clients and students often tell me the same thing. 

How about you?

__________

Speaking of clients and students, though I currently have a waiting list for my one-on-one work, there are many new course offerings on my calendar. Please check them out!