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...

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...

We have begun our journey into Holy Week with its sacred themes of surrender and unconditional love among so many others - and the commemoration of another sacred journey - that of Passover, which begins this evening... Spiritual traditions converge once again, dancing into each other, as they have for centuries, offering us an opportunity to reflect on all that unites us - rather than that which may separate us... I surround myself with meditations and reflections from various sources, and have spent Lent reviewing and immersing myself in entries posted during this sacred season in recent years, finding gems and kernels of wisdom interspersed here and there, that once more touch my heart profoundly and manage to speak again so deeply... Perhaps nothing is truly ever new under the sun... The same struggles surface again and again in my own seemingly small and insignificant life. But once more I re-learn and am reminded - that there is nothing truly small and insignificant in any li...