Are We Being Good Ancestors?

July 15, 2019

“I cannot imagine the future, but I care about it. I know I am a part of a story that starts long before I can remember and continues long beyond when anyone will remember me. I sense that I am alive at a time of important change, and I feel a responsibility to make sure that the change comes out well. I plant my acorns knowing that I will never live to harvest the oaks.” ~ Danny Hillis

How would you live your life if you took the next 10,000 years into account? If you geared your actions to benefit whoever or whatever might be around at that time? We don’t know what everything will be like in 10,000 years. We don’t know how we will travel, communicate, or if the human race or this planet will even be around. But, for this essay, let’s be hopeful and say that the world will be around and there will be living beings on it, all of them our descendants in some way. How would we make choices today, knowing that we will be the ancestors one day? What would we make if we wanted it to last and be of benefit 10,000 years from now?

My Work

November 1, 2017

“You’re going to feel like hell if you wake up some day and you never wrote the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart, your stories, memories, visions and songs. Your truths, your version of things in your own voice.” ~ Anne Lamott

Among the excess and the overwhelming on the Internet, there are calm, quiet places if I look for them. A quote that puts words to an experience I can’t yet find words to, an article that takes the words right out of my mouth, or poems that remind me of things I continue to forget. It was in one of these places where I was introduced to a poem that I need to read regularly.

Mystery - A Threat to the Modern Mind

August 29, 2017

There are ten values to living yoga in our daily life – the 5 yamas and the 5 niyamas. Some of these, like non-violence and truth, are easy to agree upon. We know that a lie will agitate the mind. Inflicting violence on someone will reverberate in our bodies and will likely be followed by a torturing regret. So, while not always straight forward to follow, it’s easy to get on board the theory.

The niyama that I have had a little more resistance to is ishvara pranidhana. This is often translated as 'surrendering to god'. This word, god, brings up resistance in many of us whether we were raised with a concept of god or not. It is a word that names some thing that is, by many interpretations, unnamable, yet w know that these differences are not always easily allowed. Even within the recorded history of yoga, this niyama has been interpreted in various ways. But, there is no denying that the appearance of this term orientates some forms of yoga as theistic traditions, although much common practice and discourse nowadays abstain from this notion.

A Modest and Meaningful Life

April 12, 2017

“How wonderful it is that nobody needs to wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ~ Anne Frank

Harold, my grandfather, was a bee keeper, a peach farmer, a gardener, a volunteer with the Amnesty International. He, like many radical pacifists, is someone who didn’t make a huge name for himself in the way we tend to think is most important. He did not get famous or make a lot of money. He was a quiet man who always seemed to be smiling. This inconspicuous way of living is something to admire and no less meaningful or impactful than those of us whose lives and words are booming in the daily news.