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Showing posts from November, 2010

Lovingkindness

When the WWJD? craze struck the nation several years ago, I was too young to appreciate what a good question that is to ask, if one considers what the answer will always be. The New Testament has Jesus out and about doing all kinds of sweet and/or mystical things for people, helping them to know a living, breathing God. Regardless of the story (tax collectors and prostitutes, fish and loaves, etc) the main point is always that Jesus is compassion embodied. What would Jesus do? Love, baby, without limit. Lately, I've become preoccupied with the term "Christ Consciousness." For those unfamiliar, it is one of many ways people talk about achieving the ultimate level of spiritual development, said to have been reached by people like Gandhi, Mother Teresa and the living, Hugging Saint, Amma. They are proof that it is possible to reach this state of totally boundless, pure love. Take Amma, for instance. A few years ago, a man attempted to assassinate her and was

Gratitude Like Breathing

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. First of all, I love food, and any holiday that centers itself around eating is golden in my book. More importantly, most people take the day to reverently consider what they are grateful for, and that's super yummy to me...even more so than my auntie's apple pie. A few years ago I was teaching a community service learning process seminar, and my students and I spent the week before Thanksgiving cultivating an "attitude of gratitude" by recording our thanks every day in a journal. We all found that we were happier with our lives after having considered how good we had it. I don't journal like this anymore, but I do take time before I fall asleep every night to give thanks for the day and revel in how cool it is to be alive. It's pretty easy to do this when things are good, but when life gets gnarly it can be harder to be happy. Lately, though, my most important meditation has been to reframe my thinking to allow everythin

Empty walls, full heart.

Last Saturday, all these good men in my life (and my lovely Brooke) showed up at my tender little home of four and a half years and helped empty it. My material life went into a small cube that now allegedly lives on Treasure Island, and almost as many things went into paper bags and were released back into the wild. The reoccurring theme lately has been Let Go. Let go of your dream workplace, let go of your dream apartment, let go of all that stuff you thought was important, let go of all those plans and expectations. Give up, release, let go. This is not an easy process for someone like me, who enjoys the steady and known. My housing situation had become borderline ridiculous, and it still felt like such a loss to leave this place where I had done so much formative living. It would seem I've given up so much and made a lot of space. What am I supposed to fill it all with now? What will take the place of my sweet home, my old microwave and everything else that met a curbside fat