Sunday night

April is coming to a close. This spring seems warmer than the last two. I stop at Farmington gardens and people are lining up to buy their trees and other plants. We get so excited by a few warm days.

The grass grows madly, voraciously, intensely, unhindered, exuberant. My poor little electric mower gags and chokes. I feel like a torturer to push it through the damp fields.

Tonight I dug out compost. This is always a small miracle, the way the vegetable matter of a year can turn itself to dirt, heavy with worms working their magic, happy worms. I try not to cut them with my shovel. I greet them like little friends, take them out to my larger garden and watch them disappear into the soil of my desires. Where ever they go, I am as happy as they are to have it be spring, warm enough to wiggle around, think about colors and birds, witness the blueberry bushes and fruit trees covered in blossoms.


There is dirt under my finger nails. I have planted my first starts of cabbage and tomatoes. It does not seem possible that the earth should be so good to us. Fickle friends as we are. The earth, an ever forgiving mother, an unceasingly tolerant friend.

             Friday Night

In the morning I will lead Sadhana with my yoga teacher trainees. We will begin outside in the cool morning air doing the energisation exercises that Paramhansa Yogananda developed. They move more than just the muscles. They awaken more than just the mind.

Tonight we did 2 hours of restorative yoga, as the light faded into night. What peace and release there is in that. I thought afterward, as I drank my cleansing water, about how I want to give that experience to others. I hope I get the chance soon.

Now it is time to go to sleep, reading words of inspiration, looking for the prayer for morning meditation. How fortunate I am, that this yoga community has moved to land on Chehalem mountain. I am a neighbor, and a friend, a member of the practice, and the teaching group. I am encountering myself in a new way, in a new place.

Full Moon over the Passion

You know, I have always loved the word 'passion'. In fact, you could say that I am passionate about the word passion. Tonight in the Zocolo of Mexico City my honey and I witnessed the pageantry of Mexican Catholicism playing out under - dude- a full moon. Really.... floats of statues depicting the stations of the cross, Roman soldiers stabbing Jesus or stealing his clothes, and his mourning mother dressed in black following behind. The 'sorrowful' mother. I do remember all this from childhood.
  In recent years I have become more enamoured with the painting of Easter eggs and the search for a decent chocolate marshmellow bunny. The passion of Christ is a mythic tale, full of metaphor and emotion, imagery and tragedy. The human condition elevated to endless yearly reenactment to remind us if, we had forgotten, of how shallow and fickle humanity is. (The republicans have done a fine job of that this year, they should get the passion award).
It is exciting to see the excitement, and even  the full scale fireworks, the street performers and the little kids tossing glow sticks in the air. The priests lead funeral processions to the droll beat of the death drum, or the keening chant with call and response. What have you done to betray a good person, they ask? What indeed.
It never hurts to look inside, to wonder about infinity and the transitory nature of this life. If statues and songs can bring people back to who they want to be, how they want to live, maybe a tear shed for someone already gone on to the big unknown, this is one way to start spring.

On Easter I will not look for any eggs in the Zocolo, only candles and statues illuminated by the full moon of April, the first full moon of spring.