Breathing fast and slow

Prolong not the past Invite not the future Do not alter your innate wakefulness Fear not appearances There is nothing more than this.                                        --Ram Dass A  friend of mine asked me about a year ago if I had any interest in starting a spiritual book club. The idea immediately intrigued me. In 2003, roughly about the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I started a book club with a group of women. Some of these women were good friends of mine, others were women I wanted to know better, two were sisters. Over a period of 10 years, we managed to read and discuss together 50 different books. I still marvel a bit at this. Naturally, some discussions were better than others as were some of the books; and, some of our discussions lasted beyond the scheduled gathering and persisted by way of passionate e-mail exchanges as we grappled with original ideas a book had stirred up. Members came and went, but, for the most part, we maintained a core group of dedicate