Parinama

    Liturgy: a release of prayer, homily, spirituals, and observances   During my daily walks around the neighborhood, I have begun to notice prayer flags strung on porches, over plucked gardens, and hanging off of wooden fences.   They are made of linen or cotton, in blue, red, and yellow with prayers pressed into the weave with black ink.   They are more apparent to me now in the grey winter light with all the primary colors drained out of the landscape and the trees bare. For the newly hung, the cloth is whole and stiff, and the prayers are black.   Uncured, these new ones are unable to let go of what they are holding.   In the older ones, the cloth has frayed and the prayers have faded pulled out of the softened cloth by the wind, rain, sun, and snow, the liturgy of the prayer flags.     In other yards, I see laundry hung across porches, gardens, and fences. Some are laid out like rainbows with reds and yellows f...

      Hopelessness is the enemy of justice.   You are either hopeful or you are the problem. Bryan Stevenson, Equal Justice Initiative   You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly, and the badly behaved until bad behavior is recognized for the language it is: the vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear. Gregory Boyle , Tattoos on the Heart:   The Power of Boundless Compassion   I have been inspired by these two present day Bodhisattva’s, people who dedicate their lives to ending the suffering of others.   Bryan Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative more than thirty years ago to adjudicate for the wrongfully convicted.   In 2018 he established the National Memorial for Peace and Justice dedicated to remembering and honoring the thousands of Black people...

  Dharma that which holds together…That which bring harmony….One’s purpose in life. Jaganath Careera, Inside the Yoga Sutras   May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the façade of your life there is something beautiful and eternal happening. John O’Donohue, For Solitude   As I search to find and align my life to my dharma , from my perch of great freedom, privilege and spiritual guidance, I have been wondering if my grandmothers who lived in a time and place of great constraint sought and found a way to live their dharmas .   I grew up with my mother’s mother Philippa in the two-family house we shared until I was 12.      Amelia, my father’s mother, died before I was born when my father was only 12.   I was close to Philly in both spirit and proximity while my nearness to Amelia came from a few spare stories, old sepia photographs, my father’s woun...

  Ishvara is a superior source of consciousness that resides in each human.   If we surrender our personal will to a higher will, if we offer ourselves to Ishvara with special devotion, then the divine will bend down to meet us halfway. Gitte Beschgaard   While Ishvara is sometimes personified as Lord or God, Gitte Beschgaard (The Gift of Consciousness) translates Ishvara as a “superior source of consciousness.”   I think of this consciousness as the one that is more open and spacious than my ego consciousness. This is the awareness that can hold paradox and mystery, unending stories, unresolved emotions, with patience.   This is the consciousness like a shaft of light in the darkness that I cannot make happen but can turn towards for comfort.     Ishvara pranidana shows me a way to let go of the irritation, resentment, and jealousy which keeps me from joy.   My deepest longing to not lose any more of my life to t...