Month: May 2020

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Racial healing (part 1)

So, here’s the subject heading that caught my eye when I checked email Saturday morning:

“It’s Time for Us White Gals to Talk About Racism”

WHOA! Say what?!?

The email was from Marcella Friel, mindful eating mentor and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) practitioner. Somewhere along the way I checked out her stuff and got on her mailing list, but this did not strike me as her usual style.

I can’t include the whole email, but I will share the entire first section below, because it is just SO INCREDIBLE!

Here’s what Marcella wrote…

“We interrupt our usual programming …”
Hi Love,
It’s Marcella here. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t stopped crying since the news of the most recent racially motivated atrocity in the U.S. on Wednesday. 
You probably know the one I’m talking about.
When I saw the image of George Floyd lying on the ground, in a pool of his own blood, with a police officer’s knee on his neck, I felt like I had been hit in the chest with a cannonball.
I spent the day in bed. I couldn’t work. 
I kept thinking: Something. Must. Be. Done.
And then I heard a voice say, “Ok then! Why don’t you do it?”
So instead of offering the virtual retreat on self-care that I had planned for June 13, I’m taking a radical turn and convening a gathering space where we who identify as Caucasian women can begin healing the ugly plague of racial injustice in our society. 
I feel like I’m jumping off a cliff. I have no idea (yet) what this has to do with binge eating and yo-yo dieting and chronic body shaming. (If you do, I’d love to hear). 
But I’m choosing to trust my guidance and move forward. 
I hope you’ll jump into this conversation with me. Let’s help each other heal this deep and devastating collective wound. 

Saying I was deeply moved by this doesn’t begin to convey my response. I could hardly breathe. By the third paragraph I was in tears.

As Swami’s song says, “What we need is light!” and this is an example of that light starting to shine brighter and brighter in our world, regardless of the seeming darkness all around us. This is an example of an empowered individual stepping forward and making a difference. This gives me hope.

A Gathering for White Women to
Compassionately Explore Racial Injustice

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Being with the process

I received a couple of emails today that triggered quite a deep inner process around questions of race and racism. The emails themselves were very positive and geared towards healing, but stuff definitely got stirred up inside me. I wanted to write about it, but I’ve been feeling like the above photo… turbulent, roiled up, agitated…

So I’m writing instead about the process. About choosing to wait, so the troubled waters can settle down. Hopefully I’ll feel much calmer about it all tomorrow, which will allow me to write from a place of clarity. The photo below helps me remember the goal of getting back to the stillness at the center of my being. Deep breath…aaahhhh!

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Time out

It goes against the grain, but once in a great while it has to be done…and we’re doing it tomorrow.. Namely, we’re consciously choosing not to do our Saturday sing-along in order to avoid a complete crash-and-burn.

I’m particularly proud of Ramesha for accepting the need for this small break. He’s been going at it full speed ahead for weeks now, and I can tell he’s starting to feel the pressure as he moves into the final week of his album launch.

It’s the culmination of close to a year of training, studying, investing, and overcoming obstacle after obstacle. He has stayed the course and is poised to reap the rewards. Yay, Ramesha!

P.S. Here’s the second lyric video, which I think is even more beautiful than the first one!

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A red letter day!

Tomorrow I have an appointment for….a haircut!

There’s nothing like having access to simple, basic stuff just go away — literally overnight! — and then stay gone for over two months to make you appreciate things you used to take for granted.

I’m now feeling properly appreciative and soooooo ready. 😄

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“Never Say No to a Lady”

The other day I was lamenting how impossible it was to find information from waaayyyy back in the mid-1980’s. After all, it was pre-internet (which I made sound almost like the Jurassic era)!

Well, this evening something made me think of Mr Lynch, my first band teacher. When I was in 6th grade and first learning the flute, we took a field trip to the junior high school to see a musical — complete with orchestra! — which Mr Lynch had composed and produced.

Based on the life of suffragette and abolitionist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, it was titled, “Never Say No to a Lady” and thrilled me to my core. I was so excited to get to junior high school so I could be part of it myself, playing in the orchestra!

The plan was to perform it in alternating years, so I waited (im)patiently through 7th grade, until finally it was time! Orchestra parts were passed out and auditions were held for the acting roles. But then disaster struck.

One of my fellow students was a pretty black girl named Bridget, and she was upset that she couldn’t audition for the lead role of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a white woman. There was the equally juicy role of Harriet Tubman, but that wouldn’t do for Bridget.

In retrospect, I realize she had a point, but my goodness! — this was 1968, I was twelve years old, and all I really cared about was getting to be part of the orchestra for a real live musical!

Well, Bridget’s mother lodged some sort of complaint, there was a big ruckus, and the musical was cancelled. They replaced it with “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”, which was a good show in its own way but didn’t come close to the level of “Never Say No to a Lady”.

Instead of a full orchestra we had a small band. And instead of powerful women characters at a important time in history, we were focused on a cartoon character. A lovable cartoon character, but still…!

Boy, was I upset when the cancellation was announced! It was so unfair and I was ready to rally the troops and lead a protest (yes, I was fairly fiery as an pre-adolescent). Acceptance of “what is” didn’t come naturally to me, that’s for sure!

The final blow? Neither Bridget nor any of the other students of color even participated in the replacement show. Oohhh, that made me mad.

So, for whatever reason I found myself thinking of Mr Lynch, but I couldn’t remember his first name and figured there would be no way I would find anything related to the show. Imagine my surprise when I googled “Never Say No to a Lady musical Mr Lynch” and actually found something!

It wasn’t much, but it was nevertheless quite satisfying to discover that Mr Lynch copyrighted his work, which showed up in the Library of Congress in the Catalog of Copyright Entries: Third series.

Now I’m wondering what it would take to find a copy of the musical itself… 🤔

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Gearing up for a trip to the unknown

Last year was a completely new and different experience, what with Ananda’s 50th anniversary and dedicating the Temple of Light. In fact, we didn’t even have our usual “Spiritual Renewal Week”, though we assumed that (of course!) we’d be back to our “usual” SRW this year.

Ha!

As we gear up for Spiritual Renewal Week 2020, we’re once again having a completely new and different experience!

The analogy that occurs to me is trying to pack for a trip when everything is unknown. The weather? Unknown. Staying in the city or the country? Maybe. Going for a week or three months? Not sure. You would stand in front of your suitcase, feeling completely bemused and not knowing where to begin.

Well, that’s kind of how this feels. There will be some live music elements; but “live” no longer means what it used to mean. Now when we think of “live”, we’re pondering how many people can we have. Which depends on the size of the venue. And on what the people are doing: talking or (heaven forbid!) singing? And on how long they’ll be doing it for. And what ages are the people in the room. And so on and so forth.

I don’t even have time tonight to get going about the “pre-recorded” or “virtual choir” elements and what that involves!

But beneath the uncertainty and slight confusion is the sense that wonderful things are poised to happen…that superconscious solutions are awaiting our attunement and receptivity…that awesome creativity is about to be released.

And I have a feeling the end result will be two years in a row of experiencing a heightened energy and flow of divine grace that leaves us awestruck and immensely grateful….beyond imagination of expectancy!

So…let’s go!

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Riding the wave

Ramesha is riding a wave of growing momentum and increasing interest in the deeply devotional chanting album he’s about to launch.

This is the artwork for the second single, which also has a beautiful lyric video (thanks once again to our resident videographer-extraordinaire, Bhaktan!) that Ramesha will be releasing later this week. He calls it “a song for compassion” and that’s a perfect description of the vibration and message of this chant.

Ramesha’s joyous excitement is contagious! But, really, I’m just super pleased to see all his hard work and focus coming to fruition.

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Relax. It’s enough.

Can you guess what prompted this post?

Yep, the day got away from me and there’s no way I can write anything of substance without going past my 10:00 “turn-off-the-computer” deadline. Which, of course, has me feeling that I fell short of the mark for today.

So I’m choosing to let it be what it is; just staying present and remembering to relax and breathe.

Which is more than enough!

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On the other hand…

Today I found myself remembering a period in my life when rather than being forced, I was motivated to get to bed early (as in midnight).

It was like this…

While I was finishing up my degree in flute performance at SF State, an acquaintance from the Quaker (Friends) meeting I attended recommended me for a rather particular job: the offices of the San Francisco branch of the American Friends Service Committee were located in a big beautiful mansion in the Inner Sunset, and they needed someone to do light housework and maintenance in exchange for a room and kitchen privileges at only $50 a month rent. Well, even in early-1980’s San Francisco that was like a miracle, so I jumped on it!

I had a sort of attic room on the third floor of the mansion, with a sweet little dormer window. I fixed it up and painted both the room and my bathroom. It was really like a haven to me.

Now, some of you will have never experienced what I’m about to describe — and others will have to think real hard to remember it — but at this time the only options for listening to music were record players, cassette tapes, and radio. And the way radio worked was you listened to what they played, when they played it. Period. No control or interaction whatsoever. Oh, and some stations, at least, weren’t on the air 24/7; they “signed off” at midnight.

That, in fact, was the case with KDFC, the classical radio station that I listened to. But their sign-off music was this wonderful, magical, exquisite piece of music that I loved soooo much that pretty soon I was hurrying to get ready for bed so that it would be the last thing I heard before I went to sleep.

Now I look back on that period of my life and oh! how I wish I could recreate a similar set of circumstances in present time. But it was such a unique and delicate balance…
….of something completely outside of my control, that…
…made me feel so very good and uplifted, that…
…I found it to be so compelling and desirable, that…
…I willingly, and consistently, altered my behavior!

Not only is it impossible to replicate those magical circumstances, I can’t even identify the piece of music that had such an effect on me. Because it was the radio station’s sign-off music, they didn’t actually announce the title or composer. I think it might have been by Stravinsky, and I think it might have had something to do with a fairy or a princess or a kiss (!), but I don’t even know what gave me those ideas.

I’ve tried to research it, but you don’t find that sort of minutiae from that many decades ago any place online. After all, it was probably just handwritten on index cards or typed up on a monthly schedule. But I feel sort of wistful and melancholy when I think of it.

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The pressure’s on…

Less than thirty minutes until the wireless gets turned off (aka “computer curfew”), so I guess I’d better write fast!

😂😂😂😂😂

But seriously, I’m kind of looking forward to being “forced” off of the computer. Makes me think about how they say it’s really important for children to have rules and structure, because it makes them feel safe and tells them someone cares. They need imposed boundaries.

Maybe I do, too.