Summer

It is officially summer. Kripalu has switched over to its summer schedule; classes are happening in the airy white tent outside; the building is buzzing with energy and heat and programs (and the occasional fire alarm); and, the bugs have transitioned from tiny mosquitoes to insistent and persistent, head-loving horse flies. The flowers are changing too; the soft whites and yellows that permeated the landscape are subtly shifting to lavenders, golds, browns, and maroons, petals large and elaborate. Yesterday, I sat under a tree and watched waves of heat climbing up out of the hot, humid grass and infusing the air with the scent of hot, happy earth. The greens are changing, being born now out of a moist richness that didn't exist a few weeks ago. Everything is new. Again.

How can we find stillness within movement? Is it really as simple as remaining connected to the breath?

This past week marked the half-way point of my time of service here, and a piece of my mind is working like crazy to erect markers of meaning, to forcibly interject its narrative atop my experience, and to protect me from the inevitable pain of leaving.

The thing is, I don't need to be protected. I can feel this, this mourning that mounts like a purple, cresting wave in my left shoulder, the shortening of my breath, the earthy pebbles that scatter themselves throughout my chest. These sensations - staying with them on their journey - leave the label "pain" churning in their wake, and I am awed by the chance to be with myself. Rumi said that "everything in the universe is within you." Bob Marley put it: "man is a universe within himself."

Could I live a life that marvels at the pain and joy with the same reverence I hold for the sweet transition from spring to summer? Every breath, everything is new. Again.