Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: St. Joseph Sangha

  • Simple Understanding

      Once upon a time…
      there was the simple understanding
      that to sing at dawn and
      to sing at dusk was
      to heal the world through joy.
      The birds still remember
      what we have forgotten,
      that the world is meant to be celebrated.
      ~Terry Tempest Williams

    June has been a very full month…. On June 22, I enjoyed a Day of Silence with St. Joseph Sangha and Empty Circle Zen. On June 29, I enjoyed a Yoga Retreat with Kathy Zerler. We did Hatha Yoga, then we each selected a rock created just for us for our retreat by friends Bobbie Roloff and Debbie Charleston. We thoroughly enjoyed Amy’s reading Everybody Needs A Rock by Byrd Baylor with pictures by Peter Parnall. In silence and gratitude we feasted on an amazing lunch before doing a Yoga Nidra exercise and having our closing circle. Om….

    All of this was timed perfectly in my life as the office suites were being remediated and my husband was undergoing medical tests following some ongoing symptoms and a mini-episode. This same week, his cousin’s son (at the tender age of 34) was receiving an LVAD. LVAD or left ventricular assist device, is a pump used for patients who have reached end-stage heart failure.

    I don’t know when I first heard the Birthday Dirge, but the opening lines are Death and gloom and black despair, People dying everywhere, but one does not have to sing a dirge to know that the conditions of human life can be challenging. What is the most beautiful truth about life, though, is how even difficulties and obstacles produce strength and compassion.

    We went with several friends to see the film Rocketman. Rocketman is a 2019 biographical musical based on the life of musician Elton John. At one point, as his mother was speaking so unskillfully, I whispered, “I hope someone in our row is breathing.” It is not an easy film to watch. His life was littered with such painful experiences. However, HE rose up out of the ashes and that is what really matters.

    The first day of July is my brother-in-law’s birthday. He passed two years ago. His life, too, had been littered with pain, and he too rose up out of the ashes of cancer to overcome addiction and soften into his authentic being.

    While it is true we are not all musical prodigy, this week—every day of every week—we all have the stuff that helps us grow. And the simple understanding as Terry Tempest Williams and the birds remember is that the world is meant to be celebrated.

    Here is the rock that selected me at the yoga retreat:

  • Commitment to Joy in Trying Times

    Tell me, what is it you plan to do
    with your one wild and precious life?

    “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver
    from New and Selected Poems, 1992
    Beacon Press, Boston, MA
    Copyright 1992

    It has been quite some time since I made a two-year commitment to a formal program of study. Deep Spring Meditation Center is offering the course and there are a lot of facets of the commitment: daily meditation practice, daily journal entries, alternating weekly Dharma talks and small group meetings with Barbara Brodsky, Aaron, and John Orr. I went reluctantly to this commitment. My conscious mind struggled with the group meetings happening on Tuesday evenings, the night our Sangha meets here in Saint Joseph Sangha. Because Sangha meets the first and third Tuesday evening, at times the meetings will directly conflict. Sangha is important to me. I am already absent part of the year.

    Another aspect of the hesitation is you know something like this is going to change you.

    The focus of the Dharma Path program, from Aaron:

    If you wished to improve your health, you might start to eat more wisely, to exercise, to meditate, and to bring joy to your life. After some time with such intentions, you would probably start to ask, “What is healthy eating? What exercises shall I do? What forms of meditation are there, and what practice would be most suitable? How do I invite joy?”

    You might then study nutrition, plant a garden and learn to talk with your vegetables; practice yoga, weight lifting, running or swimming and finally begin to look deeper at the body and what best supports wholesome interactivity of the body parts. You might regard your spirit body as an integral part of the whole of body, mind and spirit, and investigate what spiritual practices most help bring ease and support the physical, emotional and mental bodies.

    Finally, you might begin an in-depth investigation of joy and find the ways that living with mindfulness, with gratitude, with generosity, all support joy. And this is just the start.

    I am sharing with all who follow the Yellow Brick Road so you can make the choice to “go for the ride.” This phrase is common in our SCS/NLP trainings—you can set your intention to receive the benefits of this transformational change work. Mahatma Gandhi said it like this, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Consider this your invitation….

    A friend who has recently moved from St. Joseph to Holland is currently reading Shift into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness, by Loch Kelly. This friend attended Sangha in St. Joseph, and also on Pine Island, when in Florida. Shift into Freedom ties in perfectly with the Dharma Path. While you won’t be meeting all of the requirements of my two-year study, we can all get a jump start. Check out a free preview of Kelly’s book, including some amazing exercises available also on Youtube, like “What is here now when there is no problem to solve?”

    I love Mary Oliver’s poetry, and the words of the opening quote from “The Summer Day” are timely. So much is happening. Personally, politically; physically, emotionally; mentally, spiritually. It may be that nothing we will do over the next 24 months is more significant than this commitment to joy in trying times.