Found Exhortation (with which I profoundly disagree)

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Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Asta Vakrasana Variation

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I was working with photos today and came across this shot a friend took a little over a year ago.  Long gone is the memory of exactly why I did not stay fully in the pose.  Perhaps this was the beginning, and I was planning to plant my hand, lift my shoulder and hug my shoulder blades onto my back, and then do enough inner spiral and kidney loop to float off the ground.  Possible, as I have been known to get into asta vakrasana going from the ground up.  More likely, my exit strategy of the moment was releasing all the way to the floor.  What I like about this picture is that it shows me having a really good time, not me being a failure for not being perfectly in the pose.  Though it is always worth striving for the best we can do, for most things in life, the best we can do is try for the full pose and then find the joy and the beauty when we don’t end up embodying our notion of what should have been.

Icy Weather Cancellations

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I participated today in the determination as to whether the noon gentle/therapeutics class at Willow Street should be cancelled due to the weather.  It is hard to know when and what to decide unless the roads are absolutely unpassable or it is clear that that storm is not impacting most roads and sidewalks.  Some students will have wanted to come to class regardless of the weather, even if it would have been both difficult to get the ice off of their cars if driving and very slippery going from house to car and parking spot to class.  If class was held, other students would have wondered why class was not cancelled and felt it unfair that they now had to do a make-up since they were too sensible to go out in the ice.  It is a balance of trying to offer the yoga as committed and making decisions about the reasonableness of trying to hold class given safety and logistical concerns.  For a class with lots of physically intrepid students within walking distance, the determination is different than for one with people who are facing injuries and other challenges of embodiment, which can make it a challenge to get to class on even a beautiful day.

I’d love to get your feedback on where you think is the weather line between holding class as usual and cancelling.  For me, part of the call was that within an hour of class, my porch, front stairs, and sidewalk were still solidly slick with ice.  It would have been a challenge even to get to the corner, much less walk ten blocks and take the metro.  Things did not really start to melt until mid afternoon.

 

Being Thankful

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I gave thanks every day for my good fortune when we were traveling.  On the last drive north, we went through areas of Tamil Nadu hit by the cyclone.  The privilege and good fortune of being on our well-driven bus was even more telling knowing that we were only witnessing the aftermath of the cyclone through the windows from our air-conditioned comfort.  We gave to a collection to repair roof damage that would have closed for some length of time a local school.  I definitely was conscious of how much more we were engaged in the situation and wanted to help because we knew (albeit not well) people who were impacted.

Conundrum of Language?

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Thanks to my friend Patrick McClintock (and massage therapist extraordinaire) for being willing to circle around the block while were on our way to lunch so that I could take this photo.

Signs Around Town

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Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Found Exhortation

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This week’s Department of Labor elevator poster.

Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Hare Om Ganesha

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A friend wrote an email to me this morning that in a recent office move, the plaster ganesha he’s had on his wall broke.  Not to worry, though, he had been given another one to sit on his computer.  Ganesha, though sometimes hailed as the remover of obstacles, does not so much remove them as help us navigate through life so that the inevitable challenges and hurdles will feel less like insurmountable obstacles and more like opportunities to move in new directions.

It seemed almost everywhere I turned in India, I bumped into another image of Ganesha.  He’s a powerful one.  I did not attempt to photograph them all, and these are not all the photographs.  One of them is not ganesha–sometimes an elephant is just an elephant, even in a sculpture devoted to the gods.

If you are enjoying one of these images in particular, click on it so that you get to it at the largest size  and then right-click to make it your wallpaper or background.  Enjoy!

Train Ride Home

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It is hard to believe that having arrived home only two weeks ago from my trip to India that I have already gone on and returned home from another trip.  As I looked out the train window at the landscape that still holds my interest though I have seen it hundreds of time, but yet is restful in its very familiarity, I thought about how strange and wondrous it would seem to one newly visiting from a place like Tamil Nadu, especially the rural areas.

 

Found Sermon?

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When I saw this on the sidewalk, I wondered whether it was litter–the content of a note unless autographed by someone famous is still litter if it is discarded on the street; or was it a note that slipped out of someone’s hand who would miss having the phone number and the reference; or was it intentionally placed on the sidewalk so a do-gooder who routinely picks up litter from the sidewalk and walks it to the nearest trash can would be given a message?

Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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