Aligning with Grace

On this first week of Easter, I taught and subbed several yoga classes, and I told my students that this past week, which was Holy Week to Christians, and Passover to Jewish brethren, was really about making connections through shared meals and rituals. And what else is there - really? Whenever two or three - or hundreds gather - there is an overwhelming sense of oneness...  Easter Sunday was also the first time in a long time - that Christians everywhere - Catholic, Protestant, non-denominational, mainline - and the Orthodox - celebrated at the same time as well. Because Western and Eastern Christians operate on different calendars, the celebration of this day most often happens on different weeks... I attended the Easter Vigil which is really a feast for the senses. It is the most beautiful liturgy of the year - unique and ancient - and yes, very LONG! It begins in darkness and then a fire is lit. The Easter Candle is prepared and candles of all those atten...

The Triduum - the Christian "High Holy Days" - has been ushered in with Thursday night's celebration of the Lord's Supper... I attend a service that is exquisite in every way - a blend of the old and new - replete with familiar aspects - the procession of the Holy Oils, the washing of feet, the singing of ancient chants and hymns in Latin - the Pange Lingua and Tantum Ergo, which take me back decades in my life, to a time more than a half century ago. Am I really that old? Who would have thought life could go by so quickly? I have always loved all things ancient - history and artifacts, books and places - always drawn to visit places of antiquity, impregnated with the energy of the legions who lived and died there before me... And while I feel called to enter deeply into the Sacred Mysteries of my own tradition, I am no less drawn to the ancient traditions of others, having yearned for participation in a true Passover  and Seder this week. Yes, I would have love...

I enter softly into a sacred week - a Holy Week... This is a week sacred to many - with Passover and Holy Week intertwined... Holy Week is ushered in with Palm Sunday, on a magnificent weekend coinciding with the peaking of cherry blossoms, resplendent in every way, all over the city... I walk under an exquisite canopy of blossoms, enveloped in their beauty, as they "rain" their petals on my head, anointing me... In these moments, I feel a sense of oneness and presence that borders on pure ecstasy.  For over a year I have prayed and made the request - "Create a clean heart in me," (Psalm 51) seeking to embody the way and path of the heart... And this sacred season, I have sought to reflect its essence even more deeply... "The converted person does not say that nothing matters anymore, but that everything that is, happens in God and that God is the dwelling place where we come to know the true order of things... The converted person says: 'All ...

Sometimes, the paths we take converge... Recently I wrote about the ways of the heart and reconciliation... I believe, the more we commit to one path, the more we express the other - regardless of which one we start with. It does not matter... All roads lead to the same place... If you live from the heart, you strive to live from a place of integrity and in time you see beauty in everything. Nothing is accidental. Everything you do or say or try to be, comes from a place of harmony... It comes from a place of love and seeks self-expression... If you follow the way of reconciliation, you strive for greater harmony and balance - seeking atonement - or to have all things be one: "At-one-ment." This path too, leads to the heart, and it is fueled by love... "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things..." ~ 1 Corinthians 13:7 We begin with a choice. We follow one path. Then it leads to another. But it does not matt...

I decided to "refresh" my website, only three days after launching  a new one on meditation. Over a year and half ago, I changed the name of my site, after an inner prompting urging me to call it "Dwell in Your Heart." Since I first launched a website in August of 2007, I've been lucky and blessed to have been led to people that helped execute what I had in mind for a reasonable price. But I had never done the work of building or maintaining a site myself. It was simply beyond the purview of my skills and ability. Recently, a couple of friends re-did their own sites, and following their suggestion, I decided to take a stab at doing so. It was incredibly easy to do, and very empowering in the end. Not only was I able to create and redo two sites, I also successfully transferred my own domains and hosting services. As I prepared to begin a new session of yoga classes, just as I was revamping my site, I reflected on what it truly means to dwell in the ...

References to the heart continue to abound this Lenten season, but also passages, musings, and a deep and innate desire for reconciliation... I shared this with a dear soul companion recently, and she asked me what it was that I was feeling I needed to be reconciled to. God? Others? And I realized that what I meant by reconciliation is so much more... The Bhagavad Gita , a beloved scripture of Hindus, teaches there are many "margas" - ways, or paths to the Divine. For example, there is the path - or yoga of action - of good deeds and doing our duty. There is the path of karma - intricately linked to the choices we make. There is the path of devotion, and the most refined path, which is the way of meditation. But I believe, there is also the path of reconciliation... Implied in the definitions for this word are the notions that reconciliation is about making something consistent or compatible - or seeking harmony or resolution between two opposites in the midst of estr...