Thursday, January 10, 2019, 01:06 PM - Inspiring
It's hard to explain why I meditate or sit. I think it's just playing with awareness and relaxing into myself and the present moment. Early trauma apparently divorces us from both. It's really an exercise in being friends with your mind. Loosening it. Letting feeling and sensation have their way too.
I just spent a month at Upaya Zen Center. I was new to the Soto Japanese lineage but found it very beautiful once I settled in. The practice period was based on the four Bodhisattva vows. Two of them relate to cutting through our stories and delusions. But living a somewhat monastic life made me deeply appreciative of enchantment. I wonder about the line between delusion and enchantment. The connection between stillness and social justice. Between structure and letting go.
It's a powerful feeling to drop into "one body" when you are largely in silence working at an energetic awareness of others, moving in step, voices chanting, candles flickering. We communicate so much more than we realize energetically. There's something deeply relaxing about letting go of who we are and melting into these rhythms. I was often moved to tears.
More on Upaya at the link below...
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Monday, December 3, 2018, 03:39 PM - Inspiring
One of the most inspiring parts of the Transformative Learning conference at Columbia U this year was a visit that we arranged to the Thurgood Marshall Lower School in Harlem. Wow. These students practice gratitude, compassion, checking in to their feelings, reflection, meditation daily. They even have classroom charters grounded in how they want to feel. These have extended to even family charters. When I asked Cameron, our 7 year old guide and peer mediator what he liked about the school he told me" I like that we share our confidences." Gulp. Imagine a world full of these practices? This is what meditation can be, I believe. An ability to be in step with ourselves so we can be in step with others.
Monday, October 22, 2018, 11:24 PM - Outdoor adventure
Photos: Maggy Burns
Hiking today with Maggy in Ferguson's Cove. It really looked like this. Delight and gratitude. This too. Joanna gets the prize for naming the furry vegetation in the pond "slithy toves" from Jabberwocky which Maggy knows by heart!
Sunday, September 30, 2018, 01:46 PM - Poetry and Writing
Thursday, September 20, 2018, 08:12 PM - The Solidarity Economy & Microfinance
We are working on a Community Land trust in the North End of Halifax- North End Land Trust
Vision
Re-claimed land for living, working, playing in ways that grow connections and commons.
Purpose
The North End Land Trust (NELT) is an organization of residents, societies and enterprises committed to a vibrant neighbourhood, local economy and food bio-system. Nothing is more central to who we are and to justice than land. The NELT will acquire land and property incrementally, and steward it for long-term public benefit under a community owned land trust model. Public benefits may include affordable housing, cooperative and co-housing, non-profit spaces, community gardens, local employment and learning. NELT will take land out of the market, hold it in commons and in perpetuity, and lease it to residents through long-term leases.
Paul Sander Jackson from Wessex Community Assets discusses how Community Land Trusts and other community led asset owning organisations are reclaiming commons across England. Click on the link below.
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