Pamela, Donna's sub, decided on a restorative class. The workday had been a blur but I saw the return of my focus with yin yoga and whatnot. Yummy class...
Lately, all I've had to the urge to do is walk and practice yoga. Okay, I did go to the pool on Sunday but didn't realize that it was spring break. Swimming denied. Walking on...for about 75 minutes this evening and finished listening to a TED radio podcast called Happy. I liked what the host said about we have some input into how happy we will be...how our emotions are a compass (you keep going in the direction of what makes you happy)...and that happiness takes work -- religiously and over time.
Next, I checked out Krista Tippett's On Being podcast Mindfulness, Suffering and Engaged Buddhism. The bulk of the podcast is an interview with the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. She also talks with Cheri Maples who was a police officer when she went to a retreat and thought that she would have to leave the facility because of the nature of her job. Having to kill someone would negate the whole nonviolence principle that the retreat espoused but someone pulled Maples aside and told her that, of course, she should stay and who better to carry a gun than someone mindful.
Maples notes that after attending the retreat, her energy changed and, in turn, the energy of the people that she had to arrest also changed.
Maples worked as an officer for 20 years and later became a lawyer, social worker and founder of the Center for Mindfulness and Justice.
When Tippet asks Thich Nhat Hanh if he has any pressing questions, he says no and then If you know how to handle the present moment, you know how to handle the future...
On another note, Jeannette Winterson could have used a social worker or two. I spent a lot of time wow-ing out loud while reading her book. A fave passage from Why Be Happy...:
Freud, one of the grand masters of narrative, knew that the past is not fixed in the way that linear time suggests. We can return. We can pick up what we dropped. We can mend what others broke. We can talk with the dead. (58)
No comments:
Post a Comment