Parinama

"We who live in the illusion of control and self-sufficiency must learn true joy, peace, forgiveness, and love from our poor brothers and sisters… It is as important for the rich to be converted by the poor as it is to share their wealth with the poor. As long as we only want to give and resist becoming receivers, we betray our desire to stay in control at all costs. Thus we remain in the house of fear."  Henri Nouwen How do I become a receiver so that I might leave the house of fear?   Our lives are changed through illness, depressions, addictions, old age. Fear of these losses before they happen can rob us of joy.  When they happen, we can experience a terrible isolation from the world, lost to us now, that gave us sustenance and pleasure. It is frightening when care become a necessary lifeline, and we don’t know where it will come from.   My grandmother Philly spent the last ten years of her life in a nursing home.  She required care for her most ba...

 “Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.”  Neil Douglas-Klotz, Prayers of the Cosmos “There is a vitalizing action between muscles and mind, which creates space in the body for the seer to look within and enter the body without obstructions.” BKS Iyengar, Core of the Yoga Sutras Breath is forgiveness, forgiveness is prayer. Forgiveness is a cornerstone of the Christian tradition. The first words that Jesus spoke in three of the four Gospels was “Repent” while in some of his last he forgave those who persecuted him. When he visited his disciples after the resurrection, he told them there work now was to go out and forgive people. In his Aramaic translation of the Lord’s prayer, Neil Douglas-Klotz sheds new insights on how Jesus understood and practiced forgiveness and why it is essential to his teaching and our experience of God. Aramaic is the language that Jesus and the people of his time spoke.  Exploring what Jesus s...

Jackie* comes to the yoga class I teach at the nursing home.  She dresses in bright lavenders, pinks and blue bird blues, colors promising spring amidst an extended deep-frozen winter.  After the stroke, it is hard for her to move her body which is folded for most of the day into her motorized wheelchair. After class, she waits by her bedside for an attendant to lift her into bed where she can unfold, eat dinner, and watch TV before sleep.   With only a few regulars, I am never sure who will show up to our chair yoga class.  It depends how people are feeling that day, whether they can get out of bed, move without too much pain, participate in a group activity. I consider the courage it takes to come to a yoga class when movement is difficult, painful, uncontrollable, how disorientating it would be in a body that requires so much assistance and care. Surely, this is something that we all fear, our eventual body’s failing and the need for care.  Jackie looks ...