NO ZOOM YOGA FRIDAY 3/14

Heavens Reprieve

I unwrap the paper
Recycle the waste
I read the words
That proclaim our fate
”You all leave
You all doubt
You all hold in
Incredible amounts
Release & breathe
Feel the tugs on your sleeve
Trust the moment
Allow it to be
Sing your own praises
Through windblown trees”
She beckons me forth
To heavens reprieve

Tricia Schwaba, from the archives

The Souls of Animals, by Gary Kowalski

Source: The Marginalian

“They do not sweat and whine about their condition,” Walt Whitman wrote of the other animals, “they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things.” Maria Popova

Gary Kowalski from his book The Souls of Animals:
”For ancient peoples, the soul was located in the breath or the blood. For me, soul resides at the point where our lives intersect with the timeless, in our love of goodness, our passion for beauty, our quest for meaning and truth. In asking whether animals have souls, we are inquiring whether they share in the qualities that make life more than a mere struggle for survival, endowing existence with dignity and élan.

Many people think of soul as the element of personality that survives bodily death, but for me it refers to something much more down-to-earth. Soul is the marrow of our existence as sentient, sensitive beings. It’s soul that’s revealed in great works of art, and soul that’s lifted up in awe when we stand in silence under a night sky burning with billions of stars. When we speak of a soulful piece of music, we mean one that comes out of infinite depths of feeling. When we speak of the soul of a nation, we mean its capacity for valor and visionary change… Soul is present wherever our lives intersect the dimension of the holy: in moments of intimacy, in flights of fancy, and in rituals that hallow the evanescent events of our lives with enduring significance. Soul is what makes each of our lives a microcosm — not merely a meaningless fragment of the universe, but at some level a reflection of the whole.

Without anthropomorphizing our nonhuman relations we can acknowledge that animals share many human characteristics. They have individual likes and dislikes, moods and mannerisms, and possess their own integrity, which suffers when not respected. They play and are curious about their world. They develop friendships and sometimes risk their own lives to help others. They have “animal faith,” a spontaneity and directness that can be most refreshing… all the traits indicative of soul. For soul is not something we can see or measure. We can observe only its outward manifestations: in tears and laughter, in courage and heroism, in generosity and forgiveness. Soul is what’s behind-the-scenes in the tough and tender moments when we are most intensely and grippingly alive.

How To Die by Edward Abbey

HOW TO DIE — but first, how not to:

Not in a smelly old bloody-gutted bed in a rest-home room drowning in the damp wash from related souls groping around you in an ocean heavy with morbid fascination with agony, sin and guilt, expiated, with clinical faces and automatic tear glands functioning perfunctorily and a fat priest on the naked heart.

Not in snowy whiteness under arc lights and klieg lights and direct television hookup. No never under clinical smells and sterilized medical eyes cool with detail calculated needle-prolonged agonizing, stiff and starchy in the white monastic cell, no.

Not in the muddymire of battle blood commingled with charnel-flesh and others’ blood, guts, bones, mud and excrement in the damp smell of blasted and wrung-out air; nor in the mass-packed weight of the cities atomized while masonry topples and chandeliers crash clashing buried with a million others, no.

Not the legal murder either — too grim and ugly such a martyrdom — down long aisled with chattering Christers chins on shoulders under bright lights again a spectacle an entertainment grim sticky-quiet officialdom and heavy-booted policemen guiding the turning of a pubic hair gently grinding in a knucklebone an arm hard and obscene fatassed policemen everywhere under the judicial — not to be murdered so, no never.

But how to:

Alone, elegantly, a wolf on a rock, old pale and dry, dry bones rattling in the leather bag, eyes alight, high, dry, cool, far off, dim distance alone, free as a dying wolf on a pale dry rock gurgling quietly alone between the agony-spasms of beauty and delight; when the first flash of hatred comes to crawl, ease off casually forward into space the old useless body, falling, turning, glimpsing for one more time the blue evening sky and the far distant lonesome rocks below — before the crash, before…

With none to say no, none.

Way off yonder in the evening blue, in the gloaming.

Movement

Moving through life

Moving through greed

Movement restricted

Movement freed

Let’s not pretend 

We don’t know the deal

We’re gluttons for stuff

Neglecting what’s real.

Moving through life

Your unique pace

Calling upon source

Eternal grace

Point your body

Towards a new plan

One less pent up

At last you stand

Move with meaning

Be light, understanding

An easy pace

One less demanding

Making better choices

New motivation

Stimulate and inspire

Divine creation.

Tricia Schwaba, from the archives

Lunar New Year

Today begins the Year of the Snake according to the Chinese Zodiac.
Today’s a great day to clear out the clutter physically and emotionally- release the old shit that does not serve you or the greater good.

Today begins renewal. Add good stuff whatever that means to you.
Do what you must to stay strong and clear during this very tumultuous time in our nation and around the globe.

Wishing you peace, prosperity and good health ❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜🤍

Tricia

Wood Snake Art by Grace Noel

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