Sustainability

I've been doing yoga all week. I determined in Meeting for Worship last week that this week I would take a person retreat. I would (and have) read, write, work, and do yoga each day. I work so hard during the year that over the summer it is easy to get into an inertia that doesn't always feel good.  I go to lots of talks, but I do less of the internal stuff that I find sustaining. This week I changed that. I've never done so many days of yoga in a row, and each day I feel new parts of my spirit opening up.   I have often, though, been thinking about the connection between strength and peace, and about how they seem to come from the same source, which is the light within each of us. I've had a specific image of this in my head throughout the week, and tonight I decided to draw it:

Drawing is part of my sustaining practice as well. When I was in an educational leadership program a few years ago, we were all given a copy of a booklet called "Running on Empty" by Paul A. Lacey, which insists on the importance of finding sustainable practices that engage all parts of ourselves, especially through reading, writing, and drawing. He states that "The secret is to find the meaning diffused in our lives as fishes breathe water, drawing the life-giving oxygen from the medium in which they live and move and have their being." Yoga reminds me of that sentiment as well. All that my body offers me is a gift. All the ways in which I am privileged to engage the world are a gift. I am most grateful.

What's Going On?

It seems fitting that I finished Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me on the same day that I finished The Wire. I have been slowly making my way through The Wire for about ten years now. I was early in the first season for years, until I decided last summer, probably spurred on by the beginning of what now seems like our modern civil rights movements.  Last summer I got through the middle of season 3, but then it just wasn't quite sustainable for me. However, this summer, especially after the tragedy surrounding Freddie Grey and Baltimore residents' powerful reaction to that, I was fully ready for the message of The Wire. What reminded me, though, was Between the World and Me. Ta-Nehisi Coates grew up in Baltimore and his accounting of race politics in America was at once affirming and hard to take in, so I needed something to help me process it. The Wire was the perfect complement to the book because it took these challenges that I've been trying to wrap my mind around for the past few years - the need for community policing, the challenges of the war on drugs, the lack of accountability, etc - and puts them in the context of characters to whom I feel intimately connected. While I appreciated the many direct parallels between the book and the show, I'm disappointed that these problems are just as bad, if not worse, today as they were ten years ago when The Wire began.  I was walking somewhere this week when the song "What's Going On?" came through my headphones. Like Coates' book, I found it both heartbreaking and inspirational. How tragic that almost 45 years later the mothers are still crying and the brothers dying and we all feel powerless to stop it. However, my approach seems to be similar to Garvey's - I am also a firm believe in the fact that "only love can conquer hate." I even have a t-shirt that says it! Each of us who wants to stand on the side of love must do so dragging everyone that we can along with us. As Coates' agrees, individuals cannot do it alone - we need a sea change.

Find the Good: Bookstores for a Cause

One of the joys of my summer has been discovering bookstores for good.  First, I was introduced to the Housing Works bookstore in New York (http://www.housingworks.org/bookstore).  Their website says: "We are a nonprofit bookstore, cafe, and event space in downtown NYC. All proceeds from every show you attend and everything you buy, down to a record and a PBR, go directly to our mission of fighting AIDS and homelessness." At Housing Works I found a gem of a book called Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons from a Small-Town Obituary Writer (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/19/10-unexpected-life-lessons-heather-lende_n_7089702.html). It adds a bit of sunshine to each of my days since I've been reading it. 

I also recently stumbled across the Books for America (http://www.booksforamerica.org) used bookstore in Dupont Circle. Their website says: "Is it just a used book store?  Hardly.  This store (or Center for Reading & Literacy as we also like to call it) is the headquarters of our nonprofit organization; it is an outreach tool to introduce us to thousands of additional people in the local community; and it is a valuable fundraising tool which provides nearly 100% of our financial support.  And, best of all, because we price the books almost ridiculously low, everyone can afford to buy the latest books!" To that I can attest. I bought books their that I have wanted for years, but the price of $4 or less for each of them made my decision to buy easy.  

There is nothing better than combining the pleasure of buying books with the warmth of supporting a good cause!

"It always seems impossible until its done." - Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela's statement has proven true time and time again.  Last night I went to an event at which women who had gone on a peace march across the demilitarized zone from North to South Korea spoke about how the recent peace with Cuba and Iran supports hope in a peace to come between the US and North Korea. Today I went to a talk by the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari and he too talked about how he was inspired by his witnessing the 'impossible' fall of the Soviet Union. I found a great book last week called The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear and I can't wait to read it's reflection on this topic. I love anything that keeps my optimism alive!

Work is Love Made Visible

Sometimes in the summer it is hard to remember that the work that we teachers do, which goes unpaid in these months, comes from the same inner source of love as our work during the year. I was reminded of that in yoga class today as the teacher was discussing the light within us and asking us to reflect on how we extend that light outward. I have also been pushed toward this reflection from the book My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer by Christian Wiman, which encourages full integration of our spiritual and practical selves. My touchstone for this comes from the poem "On Work" by Kahlil Gibran:

On Work
 Kahlil Gibran

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, 
and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret.

But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.

You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.

And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, 
even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, 
even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, 
even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead 
are standing about you and watching.

Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, "He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet."
But I say, not in sleep but in the overwakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

Roots and Branches

Yesterday in Meeting for Business we talked about how branches and roots need each other to be healthy, and that is also the case for faith and action (in the form of service). A quote from Baltimore Yearly Meeting was shared: "As our roots grow deeper into the ground, finding a spiritual source, our limbs and branches grow too, reaching out to each other and the world, bearing fruit.  If our roots weaken, our harvest diminishes.  If our branches weaken, so do our roots. " It led to a great reflection in Meeting for Worship about how I would define my roots, my branches, and the connection between them. What a wonderful exercise toward living a purpose filled and well directed life.

From Rwanda with Love

I spent two weeks in Rwanda and my greatest takeaway was an affirmation that the worst of times can bring out the best in humanity. The people of Rwanda, faced with a broken world, understood that they had to come together to build a future; it was the only way and they have embraced that responsibility with an open heart. To counteract the hate that tore their society apart, Rwandans now love with a rare intensity. And they think about how to share their gifts to the benefit of their entire communities - from conservation to education to entrepreneurship. Over and over again we heard about how Rwanda's greatest resource was its people - ALL of its people. And they are truly stronger together. What a beautiful model for those of us in the United States.