Breathing fast and slow

" Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist..."                                                             Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones Many years ago, I read an article that described an early encounter between John Lennon and Yoko Ono. While I no longer recall every detail, I remember that Lennon had come to an art installation of Ono's. I believe the two had met on at least one prior occasion. In the room, among the rest of the art, was a ladder. In the article, Lennon talked about climbing the ladder where he discovered at the top a small word in very small print. The word was, yes , and it was all the affirmation Lennon needed to begin his life with Yoko Ono as his companion. For reasons I cannot explain, I recall this story often, and not so much the story but the yes in it. Yes is a powerful word. Right now, I am doing battle with it. It is a familiar battle, one that I engage in often when I take my seat

Vintage Ani, 1990 In a recent interview for Sun Magazine (May 2016), Ani DiFranco shared the following Facebook post chronicling an exchange between a mother and that mother's three-year-old daughter about the logo for Righteous Babe Records--DiFranco's independent label-- which uses the image of DiFranco at left. "The mother had on a Righteous Babe sweathsirt, and her little girl pointed to the logo and asked, 'Is that a girl?' She said yes, and her daughter asked, 'Is she so, so, so strong?' And her mother answered, 'Yes, she is so, so, so strong.' And her daughter said, 'That makes me happy, Mommy!' While I am devoted to my yoga practice and routinely read from the vast library of yoga texts, I also very often read books about Buddhist philosophy and meditation. I have a subscription to Tricycle magazine and have attended mindfulness seminars as well as lectures by Lama Surya Das, an American lama who started out as a Jew