Gathering

Dear Friends,

The inner side of political and environmental activism hangs on the conviction that our inner deeds, while not made of matter, matter.

So love, devotion, good will, attention, are real events in the world, as real as steel and concrete. It matters that we collect ourselves, gather in a group, collectively practice the arts of attention, and then offer the fruits of our gathering to the world.

Today, the target of our good will is not Ukraine alone. We will take time at the start of the hour to name some of the global and local sources of concern we have right now. At the end of the hour we will offer our gathered energies to wherever they may be most helpful.

Our central focus will not be the areas of need, but the process of gathering itself. We will start with our self-gathering as individuals, move on to our self-gathering as the active community-of-this-hour, and then spend the bulk of our time in silent, breath-focused concentration, gathering ourselves into the the breath.

Unlike past occasions of breath-focus, we will be combining the breath as touch sensation with the many meanings of the breath. As usual, however, we will have time for countless distractions and returns from distraction. We are likely to notice that in spite of (or just because of) interruptions and confusions, by the end of the session our attention has grown sweet and strong: a gift worth giving.

with love,
Michael