Full Moon Ritual, October 5, 2017

Come celebrate the Full Moon in Ares— prime time for
re-awakening, re-igniting, and re-imagining ourselves;
to stand in our fullness and in the light of our own truths;
to release the chaos and projections of others
so that we may be at our strongest as we show up
for sacred activism and service.

Shamanic Practitioners and Interfaith/Interspiritual Ministers Holly Rowley and Riva Danzig invite you to join them in Ceremony to invoke the power and support of the first Full Moon of the Autumn season. Come stand in the light of this Harvest Moon.

*************************************************************************

Date: Thursday, October 5, 2017

Time: Gather between 7:30 and 8:pm at the foot of the step street at Bailey Avenue & Van Cortlandt Park South (Riva will email details when you RSVP, or enter the above cross-streets into a GPS or Mapping app). We will be walking as a group into a wooded area of the park and ask that you arrive promptly. The Ritual will last till about 10pm.

What to Bring: Your whole selves and begin to think about what intention you’re bringing to the ritual. Also, things to leave as offerings to the water and the moon: flowers, herbs, fruit, veggies, seeds and grain, high quality chocolate, bread, essential oils.

Please consider a love offering for the officiants, as you can.

For More Info: Contact Riva: rev@rivadanzig.com, 917-602-4588, or
Holly: revholly@yahoo.com, 330-842-1350.

NOTE: Please RSVP so we’ll know to expect you at the gathering place.

Photo Credit: Full Moon over Van Cortlandt Park Lake, June 2017, by Holly Rowley

Lectio Divina – Autumn 2016

Back in my Seminary days, we were taught a practice called "Lectio Divina" (divine reading). Wikipedia describes it as "a traditional Benedictine practice of scriptural reading, meditation and prayer intended to promote communion with God and to increase the knowledge of God's Word." At my interfaith Seminary where we were exploring the Oneness of all things, of all beings, of all spiritualities, "scripture" covered many sorts of texts. Communion with the Divine could be achieved through a Rumi poem, a talmudic midrash, a passage from Bird by Bird, or a Marvel comic, if we were reading it right.

Since February 2016, I've been practicing Lectio Divina, although I hadn't realized it until yesterday. Each morning, I read an entry from a daily Mussar reader, a pair of verses from the Dhammapada, and finally, a poem from Seasons of the Witch: Poetry and Songs to the Goddess by Patricia Monaghan. This last book I added only recently. I'm not even sure what drew me to it, though I've always loved Monaghan's work. Maybe, as we move into the later fall and coming winter, and as we inch closer to this extremely charged, consequential, and triggering presidential election, reading poems organized around the seasons and focussed on The Goddess seemed like it might help clear away some of the dread and anxiety growing in me as the weeks have passed. Yesterday, the poem I read lifted my spirits and settled my nerves. The poem left me feeling grounded and ready for whatever the coming days will bring us. It also shone a light on the true nature of this practice I've been doing for nearly 9 months. Somehow, this monastic tradition of lectio divina had found its way into my life. I can hardly imagine starting my day without it.

I want to offer the poem here. May it lift the spirits of those of you reading it who might also be struggling to stay in balance and hold a sense of equanimity during these unsettled times.


The Goddess Instruction Manual, Part Three:
How to Make Love like Oshun

1. Begin with fingertips.
Read every burning tree,
red fruit, blue stone.
Move on to wind and water.
Then seasons, futures.

2. When adept, try this:
Read the body. First your own.
Its history and poetry,
Its intimate geographies.
Keep eyes closed.
See with touch.
Memorize yourself.

3. Touch each other.

4. Continue as above.

5. Continue as above.

6. The world, the eyes
open. O wonder!
O newness!
O fragrent air!
O blue sound!
O body radiant
with imperfection!

7. Everything should be
liquid at this point.
Liquid and golden.
Dive and plunge.
Swim. Frolic.

8. Something 
shattering:
crystal,
purple glass,
dark blue porcelain.
Break apart.

9. Dissolve in light.
Dissolve into pale stars.

10. Keep looking,
Keep touching.

11. The word is:
yes.
The world is:
yes.

12. Continue as above.

* * *

And together, let us say, Amen. May Oshun, the Yoruba Orisha of the river and fresh water, of luxury and pleasure, sexuality and fertility, beauty and love, connected to destiny and divination, bless us with the resources in all realms to create bright, abundant, flowing, love-filled lives. #imwithher #lovetrumpshate #vote

Puzzling Over Mama

It's Thursday evening. I'm usually 45 minutes into my Anthropology of Media class, but I was given a welcome gift of having my class cancelled. While I regret the illness of the professor which caused the cancellation, the unplanned-for bit of space/time allowed me to go and do a good food shopping. I've been running on empty all week because of the non-stop work schedule, which includes copious amounts of reading for this class. I've been eating take-out for days and days!

As I was putting away the fresh food, I discovered a bag of brussel sprouts. It's what was left of a big stalk of them I'd bought at the last of the season's pop-up farmers' market that comes each Wednesday from May to early November. The brussel sprouts needed cooking and so, as I write this, I'm roasting them and they'll be the centerpiece of a dinner whose other parts I have yet to devise!

The farmers' market sets up in the little playground I used to take my now 30-something kids to when they were toddlers. My neighborhood, which I love for its urban beauty and relative quiet, has many such reminders of the passage of time and the stages of life. This very park is the one where my mother enjoyed sitting when she could still be social; and which she could look out on from her kitchen window -- watching the kids playing. She loved that kitchen window. Now someone else's mom has taken up her position there. A good legacy, I hope.

Will my mother's death ever stop puzzling me? On my next birthday -- at the end of November, it will be 6 months to the day she died. It will be the first birthday I've ever had without her in the world. Not that I've spent each one of my soon to be 67 birthdays in her presence, but it means something to me -- this first one, out here on my own. There'll be many firsts in the 12 months following her death. Thanksgiving, Chanukah, New Year's Eve, and oh yes, Mothers' Day.

Mama, c. 1954

I don't remember a time when I wasn't sad or angry at how it felt like she never loved me, how I always seemed to be disappointing her, how she was sure I didn't love her -- though I did. So here's the puzzling thing: as my brussel sprouts roast, as this early darkness turns to night, as I wonder what else I'll have for my dinner, I notice that my heart hurts and that I miss my mother, who loved brussel sprouts and probably, in her fashion, loved me.

I think perhaps missing the woman who birthed me shouldn't come as such a big surprise. Her body housed my body. I suspect that that right there is a forever-and-ever bond that psychotherapy doesn't really need to "fix." Even if our lives together went badly from my very first breath, here I am nearly 7 decades on, relatively healthy, with wonderful kids, friends, and talents. Somewhere, being grateful for my life got lost in a shuffle of what it seemed she wanted in return for giving me that life. But I am grateful. And I love her. And it's puzzling.

My prayer is that Mother-love becomes simple for me and for so many others who struggle with it; may we be able to simply honor these beings who gave us birth -- whether they raised us well or not, whether they raised us at all. I mean to walk the rest of my days in a way that honors the memory of my mother. May she rest in peace, if there's a place of awareness where she is now, may she feel my love for her.

The Horse I Rode In On

Recently, at a private session with an extraordinary healer and teacher of Energy Medicine, I expressed my frustration at how much, after a lifetime of personal work of all kinds, I still suffer. For all the healing work I’ve done, I can, on a daily basis, fall into states of self-hatred that seem like it’s all there is, was, and will ever be. And while I know this is a feature of clinical depression, I am remarkably high-functioning for that to be an accurate or complete diagnosis. It’s as if it’s my default setting — triggered by the slightest breeze that might ruffle the forward movement of my day…. letting the oatmeal catch, not getting the laundry done, finding an hour has passed when all I meant to do was glance at Facebook; or, if nothing in my local life gets me there, thinking about the rich getting richer, about war, global catastrophes, my mother, and all the other mothers and fathers, in dementia. There is always something.

My teacher said to me, “Riva, you came in on the Suffering Line.” Oooof. The feeling of a blow to the solar plexus, but then, the exhale of recognition, the light of understanding, of hearing Truth. I understood her to be saying that it’s my design to see through the lens of suffering and that it’s my lineage, it’s in my DNA, the collective memory to which I am most powerfully connected. And then she asked me this: “So who are you?” Typically, this sort of question brings me to a deer-in-the-headlights state of being. Frozen terror. She spoke some more, describing her own experience — who she is in relation to her lineage story. She said, “All those who came in after me on the same line as I did are able to change the story of that line because I did.” And then, with an easy certainty that is also ferocious and always gets my attention, she said, “I did that.”

What we do and who we are as individuals impacts everything.

For all my mystical ways and my belief in magic and the unseen, my habit of mind when I feel “caught in the headlights” is to try to figure my way out of the oncoming danger with logic and linear thinking. In this case, I put together a quick analogy that looks something like this:

My teacher’s lineage is to who my teacher is as my lineage is to who I am.

Resting in the logic for a moment, a clever formula that I imagined would yield up a result and answer the question “Who am I?” without my having to suffer and struggle, got me unfrozen. I took a breath, still hoping that before I'd even taken in the full import of what I'd just learned, a story to match hers would emerge. 

And then she went on to say that we must start our healing work from where we actually are. “Most [which included me — and oh how I hate to be typical], begin at a distance from the true starting point. She said, “You must start from where you came in.” Reframing it for myself, I thought, “I must tend to the horse I rode in on,” and as a person with 4 planets, including Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Chiron, in Sagittarius, it’s really a pretty good way to frame it.

So, I make a beginning at learning who I am, having come in on the Suffering Line. What I know for sure is that I am a gifted and accomplished sufferer. And I am also someone who can see/feel when others are clinging to their suffering stories like it was the only thing keeping them tethered to life. Every once in a while, I am able to shine a light on that clinging in a way that helps them loosen their grip and to shift the suffering as only compassionate witness can. So there’s that. Without having consciously known why suffering is such familiar ground for me, this familiarity, coupled with a pretty good, if dark, sense of humor, has fueled the service I do for others. Perhaps, to begin at a slow, steady walk down this road, the better question might be “What are the gifts of my lineage?”

The horse I rode in on — the lineage of Suffering — when I bring my awareness to her, when I take time to tend to her coat, lovingly stroke her beautiful face, give her a tasty apple — I see she carries with her certain other qualities, easily missed in the compelling pain of the suffering. What I see is Survival, Empathy, and Compassion. I can work with this. I can honor the truth of the suffering. There is, after all, reason to suffer. But just maybe I can change my relationship to the suffering when I pay attention to its fruits. Taking a page from my Buddhist sisters and brothers: There is suffering. 

I am an expert. Now What? 

Mounting up and ready to ride!

Getting Down To It

I'm amazed that nearly two years have passed since I've posted here. It felt like only a few months. This, it would seem, is how life goes. Just as my parents and grandparents said it would.... you blink at 17 and you're 65, which is exactly what's happened. At this writing, I'm 5 months into it. My half-fare metrocard that says "Senior Citizen" continues to shock me.

Me, 1964, sitting on the back bumper of (I'm told) a 1957 Pontiac, traveling down to D.C. for a March on Washington.
The Civil Rights Act was about to be passed, and I was about to turn 17.

But here's an interesting thing — an awareness bubbling up out of the turning of the years; the continued self-reflection; the growing belief in forces, powers, and Spirits greater than myself: when I am standing squarely in this moment, my relationship to time changes completely. There is no regret over roads taken or not, no concern about how long something will need in order to get accomplished, how even more senior I'll be by the time I get there. A life composed of one moment following the next becomes timeless. The more times I experience timelessness, the fewer times I'll blink my life away.

What I also know is that as often as others have said things like this — Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, all the Wisdom teachers I've been privileged to read, hear, receive transmission from — until Present Moment awareness arrived in me, it was only ever an idea to me. Mostly, I thought it might be a bogus bit of mind game.

And so, I understand now that some things can be described, but "getting it" is a completely individual matter. What I know to say about this is that with just the right combination of books read, relationships had, diapers changed. bills paid, dishes washed, meals cooked or ordered, with just the perfect blend of miracles observed and experiences of wonder, well, one day you could be folding laundry, answering email, or cleaning the cat box and you realize you're neither old nor young. You simply are and you've gotten down to it — this business of being fully alive.

Bright blessings on that moment when it comes!

Travelogue

Halfway through the journey
You forget which way
You meant to go. You
Stop, and slowly turn toward
Each direction till you feel
A tug. It’s this way: North.
And though you dread the
Darkness and the cold,
You know by now it’s
Better just to listen when
You’re called.
You move through woods
And cities, mountain ranges,
Rivers, valleys, farms, and villages.
Through fox dens,
Rooftop pigeon coupes,
A beaver dam, McMansions,
Cardboard boxes. Till you reach
The Condor’s Cave where
You are welcomed.
You spread your wings
As though you’ve had them
All your life and you begin
The next leg of your journey
Soaring on­ the thermals,
So close to the sun you
Start to laugh because 

You worried you’d be cold.

A New Chapter

As happens every few years, I have been seized by the poetry muse. And so begins a new chapter. I'm happy as can be to be writing poems good and bad. Much gratitude to those people in my life who support me in this activity, along with my genes, which would predict that I'd be doing this. The poems have started to surprise me because the subjects are things I'd never have imagined would inspire me, like the following offering. Written today, it is the second poem I'm sharing in this space. Thanks in advance for reading it. xR

Breaking Training

With Gratitude to Julianne of Norwich,

Christian mystic, died c. 1416

I let myself believe

that all is well, and

all is well, and all

manner of thing

shall be well.

How contrary to

my upbringing,

this notion is,

as if to see

this troubled

world and feel

around inside it

for the healing,

is to be

boring, vapid,

born without

imagination, or,

worse yet,

a traitor to

my ancestors.

But I take comfort

in the certainty

that we mystics

have no need of

adjectives, and that my

Sister Julianne

would recognize me

not as Jewish mystic

but as a fellow celebrant

at the dawning of the day.

An Offering

My friend, Maya Stein, has been on a journey she's calling Type Rider. She's cycling from Amherst, MA to Milwaukee, WI -- 40 miles a day for 40 days, beginning on her 40th birthday, which was on May 5th. Today is day 39. She's carting along with her, in a little trailer attached to her bicycle, a turquoise Remington typewriter. Everyday, she sets up a workstation with a chalkboard that says" Write Yourself Here." She provides passersby of every type of human there is with a writing prompt and has been collecting what she's calling "The Great American Poem." She's also posting those prompts to a google group for those of us who are following along without having left home. 

The poem below comes from the writing prompts from Day 37 
(I choose to believe...) and 38 (I am...). 

The Hope

    with gratitude to Patricia Monaghan

What is this unending love
I choose to believe will heal me, 
and you, and the planet, 
will heal the madness that’s stealing 
my grand-children’s future? 
I feel it in the constancy of
the sun coming up in the east, 
the moon waxing full every month, 
the change of the seasons, 
the shifts in the tides, and 
in the certainty that all things pass. 
I am that crazy old woman 
in the middle of Times Square, 
laughing and pointing at the sun 
as it rises over the city, 
as it streams its golden light
across 42^nd Street. I am the one 
who calls out to the rushing people,
“Behold! Behold!”

Encountering Starling

Gorgeous Spring weather, a week before the Equinox, has my windows open and the screens not yet in place. I come home from an early outing to find a starling frantically keeping out of paw's reach as my cat, Lucy, in full hunting mode, is tracking her. The starling, whose home, typically, is in one of the big oaks on my street rather than in the confines of my little fifth floor apartment, seems to have established a route through the house; various perches from the top of my bookcases in the living room to the top of the big framed mirror in the entryway, to the top of the kitchen cabinets, then back the other way as Lucy stalks her. All very exciting (for Lucy), and frantic (for the trapped starling). I am happy for Lucy. Not much adventure in her life these days, but I am distressed for the starling who I have no idea if I'll be able to coax out of the house. And then there's the inevitable deposits of birdshit I'm likely to be finding.

My first task, much to her consternation, is to get Lucy into the bedroom and close the door. Then, I make an effort to send a wave of calmness to the bird. I assume an attitude of complete indifference, keeping my focus away from her as I begin to plan an exit strategy. I am already grateful for whatever powerful message Starling medicine holds for me. When the bird is free, I'll be looking at my books and online for information about Starling medicine! But first things first. Free the bird! My kitchen window is the biggest window in the house. It opens onto a fire escape so getting to it involves unlocking the gate I have installed -- a sad reality of city living. Gate open, I pull up the bottom half of the window as wide as it will go, which seems plenty wide. The bird flies directly into the top half. Somehow, she regains her perch on top of the kitchen cabinet and, sitting with its beak wide open (is this starling for "I just bashed into a not terribly clean window pane. I'm embarrassed, pissed off, and my head hurts...."?), seems to be waiting for my next move. Continuing my attitude of disinterest, I close the bottom half and open the top, kicking myself for not thinking like a bird. What must it be like to actually fly!! Up! think "Up!". I step away, all the way to the door of the kitchen which is the farthest point away from the window. I hold up the sweater I’ve been wearing to discourage the bird from heading this way. I have the pleasure of seeing her take her leave. I cheer and clap and feel jubilant. This has all taken, perhaps, five minutes, from my walking in the door to the the bird gaining its Freedom.

I let Lucy out of the bedroom and watch her as she searches the house for the intruder. Ultimately, homebound creature that she is, she's distracted from the prowl by her food dish where she makes short work of what remains of her breakfast. The house settles down. I close some windows, put screens in others and go to my computer to start work. But first Starling Medicine. What wisdom, what story, what instruction, does this encounter hold for me?

Starling – birds that fly in great flowing swarms, creating living waves in the sky. Surely, they are masters of community. What caused this individual to pierce the veil between our worlds? I will be thinking and dreaming on this encounter for a good long while. Right now, I find myself focussed on what Starling offered me: an opportunity to take action without thinking, to move quickly, efficiently; to be fearless and precise in the care of three different species; to have my attention brought to bird-mind (Up, silly! Up!); to be an agent in a story with a happy ending involving freedom.

I know there's more here to know from this encounter. I'll be watching for how Starling shows up in the coming days. Stay tuned.

40 days and 40 nights + 325

Exactly a year ago today, I began the journey that continues to be an adventure of growth, discovery, and transformation. Yesterday, incredibly, and without my consciously realizing its relationship to last year's journey, I began a 10-day kitchari fast. I'm not sure I would have begun yesterday if not for a dear friend and soul sister asking me if I had any interest in joining her on a fast/cleanse. I'd been thinking about doing another one -- using it as a kind of "re-boot" because I've been revisiting old, less-than-healthful ways I have with food -- but I hadn't really settled on when to do it. Her invitation opened the door and we agreed to start on 8/8/2011. The numerology felt right and neither of us could think of a reason that the Mercury Retrograde would make this harder.

And so, last night, when I made an effort to post a blog entry here, I discovered the synchronicity of the timing (is that a redundancy?). I thought to pick the blog back up when I recalled how grounding, how steadying it was, and how posting entries here helped me to remain conscious during the nearly six weeks of the rigorous practice of feeding myself in ways I never had. I thought it would be good to again give myself this container. And so here I am. Day 2.

This year, I'm having to kick caffeine and sugar, which I didn't last year. Where last year I felt mentally "sharper" on day 2, today...not so much. But I do feel lighter, easier in the rest of my body. Last year on day 2, I'd put my back out shlepping jars of kitchari that I'd prepared in my friend Grace's kitchen. Incredibly, I was again at Grace's this past weekend, and I again made kitchari. This time, though, I gave what was left of it to her, came home, and made a fresh batch. So, different challenges -- last year the back, this year, the caffeine withdrawal. And, truth be told, as I write this at 1:30pm, I no longer have the headache. One little excedrin at 2:30 this morning seems to have gotten me over the hump. I seem to need to be less strict this year. Last year, I wouldn't have taken excedrin. Interesting altogether. My commitment in life remains to work for the Repair of the Planet. Last year, I came to understand that I had been willing to abuse my body in parallel ways to how the Earth is abused. The 40-day fast was a commitment to the Earth Mother to tread lightly, live simply, and practice the Repair of the World in the big and small acts of practicing the Repair of my body. Over the counter drugs seems like a bit of compromise there. But for whatever reason I could manage it last year, I could. Hopefully, I will take the lesson and move on. I'm spending less time in guilt or even shame. Clarissa Pinkola Estes says in A Dangerous Old Woman that "Wisdom is what works." She goes on to say that what works changes either in the very next moment or over longer periods of time. I like this teaching. It allows for an excedrin.

Another teacher for me today is Eve Ensler. This is intense, but very valuable. Click Here for an amazing TED talk.

Blessings on you all! Thanks for reading!

40 days and 40 nights — Day 40 + 14

6:45pm Sundown in 19 minutes, the start of the Sabbath. Two weeks since I ended my fast. Two weeks of exploring new terrain. I have been going very slowly with respect to figuring out how to eat. Mostly, I've kept a pot of kitchari handy. The only non-plant based food I've eaten is eggs, and not very many of them.

Three things stand out for me.
Number 1. I have missed writing this blog — missed reflecting on the days as they passed. Through this blog, a web of support formed around me — something that made the whole endeavor possible, something I would wish we all could have all the time. Yesterday a dear friend and teacher who had been following the blog, wrote me to say she missed it and suggested I write an entry to catch folks up. She presumed that if she missed it, others might too; others might want to know what has been happening for me in these two weeks. I'd been missing it too but felt that I couldn't yet deliver the postscript I'd promised on Day 40. I'd imagined it would be a deeply thought out essay where I would have thoroughly analyzed everything that had happened along the way and I would be able to say, unequivocally, the ways in which I was transformed by the experience. That notion, conceived within the safety and spaciousness of the fast, was swallowed up by a maelstrom of busyness that descended as soon as I stepped outside of its comfortable confines. Which leads me to...

Number 2. The 40 day fast which I had envisioned for myself was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. It was a framework which determined everything else about my life: where I went, who I engaged with, how I spent my time and money, what I thought about. I was living a daily spiritual practice and reaping its rewards in the form of love, companionship, tangible support, deepened intuitive abilities, greatly improved self-esteem. I slept better, smiled more, knew what needed to happen next. I became proficient in the kitchen in ways I'd never been nor ever cared to be. I was interested in the qualities of the foods that went into the kitchari. I blessed each bowl I ate, I gave away as much of each pot as I myself consumed. People felt immediately nourished by it, as did I. When the 40 days ended I was shocked at how all that changed. Not once in 40 days did I burn the bottom of the pot. Not even one time — and that's saying something. Once the 40 days were over, all of a sudden I kept forgetting I was cooking until I smelled it catching! Or I'd forget some key ingredient, which I hadn't done before. Even though I'd said I'd go another ten days, it just didn't carry the same fire, the same juice, the same sanctity that the 4o days did. AND, I began to feel depleted. The fear that I was becoming deficient in some key nutrient returned. I knew that down this road is the path to the dreaded American Diet which has been so wrong for me. What I have been grappling with is how to hang on to a key learning that has come from these 40 days. The Learning: I have reached a stage in my life where I am the expert when it comes to what I need to sustain me. The key is to listen with great care; to call on Spirit and then listen as the answers form inside me. This is a radical act, entirely counter culture. How do I stand firm in this truth without the safety net of the fast? What is it about the 40 days that allowed me to be the person I want to be all the time. How can I re-create that outside the fast? And last, but hardly least...

Number 3. It's as if I've shed the fat suit I was shlepping around for the last many years. In 40 days, I dropped nearly 25 pounds. To be sure, I'm no slip of a thing, but I feel so much better, so much more like myself. This is pure bonus, though it's certainly welcome and it's a very visible effect of the fast. Any nutritionist would wag a finger at how quickly I've lost this weight. But, I felt better than I had in a very long time all the way through. The depletion came after the 40 days ended and I was in a quandary about what and how to eat. I let myself get dehydrated, I didn't eat enough, I fasted on Yom Kippur, was an officiant at not one but TWO fire rituals in this period. In fact, yesterday was the first day I started feeling better. I've been taking care to hydrate more, and I've been feeling more confidant around food. I'm not so worried any more that I will suddenly, accidentally, eat a bag of chips.

I am still captivated by what I've learned about my sacred activism and how it's through the care and feeding of this body that I'm coming to know the truth of what started me on this practice in the first place: when I was preparing to do a Ceremony to Heal the Waters of the Gulf of Mexico, I began to think about how I have treated my body with the same disregard as humanity treats the EarthSeaMother. This awareness grew into a commitment to pay more than just lip service to my commitment to Tikkun Olam. I think of Bernice Johnson Reagon, in an interview with Bill Moyers explaining the beauty and power of Black Gospel music in how personal it is. She uses as an example: "This little light of mine I'm gonna let it shine...."
I take a stand for the healing of the planet through the healing of my body.
YES! Let it begin with me!

40 days and 40 nights — DAY 40!!!!

6:52pm Wow! I did it. Sunset in 8 minutes from now. 40 days of kitchari and I've lived to tell about it. I will fast for Yom Kippur, beginning tonight at sunset, as I'd planned from Day 1. My counting error which made today be the last day, rather than tomorrow, feels like the right thing now – though I will always regret having not directly linked the Ramadan fast to the Yom Kippur fast. Oh well. Next year in Jerusalem. Perhaps, if the two fasts fall on the calendar in the right way, I'll try again. I've had my last bowl of kitchari of this 40 day practice and am moving into something new which will unfold.

Tonight I must make my final preparations for the Fall Equinox/Yom Kippur Forgiveness Ritual taking place tomorrow. In the coming days and weeks, I'm looking forward to writing about the extraordinary journey I've been on, the learnings, the surprises, the openings, the letting go's. During that time, more will emerge. I will post that exploration as a postscript. For now, 40 days and 40 nights — The Blog, has come to a close.

Thank you, my dear friends, those who have joined me along the way in eating kitchari, those who have witnessed silently, and those who have cheered me on. I have been held in a powerful field of love and support that I will carry with me always.

Mitakuye Oyasin, All My Relations, Tikkun Olam!

40 days and 40 nights — Day 38

7:47am Including today, three more days. As of today, I've decided to have a meal of curried vegetables with lamb to break my fast on Yom Kippur and then, starting Sunday, begin 10 more days eating kitchari. These 10 days are to give me time to live outside the safe haven of the 40 days and take a deep look at everything I've learned, time to be with what's changed in me without overwhelming my system — and by that I mean my whole system.

A question that I need to answer for myself: How do I retain the simplicity that has entered my life as a result of how much attention I've had to put on the act of keeping myself fed? Formulating that question as I write this, at least at the level I'm able to look at the issue in this moment, helps. A lot. The fast has brought great simplicity to my life. My days have systems in place that support the primacy and sanctity of the fast. Shouldn't it be possible to bring this intentionality into everyday life? What IS everyday life anyway? Maybe that's the larger question. What do I mean by "everyday life?!" I think what it's meant to me has been the stuff that's forgettable, that's unimportant, that's boring, hard, or doesn't make for a good story when you talk about it to your friends. Today, it doesn't feel right to relegate any part of life to the category of forgettable. These days, I find everything, at the very least, interesting. Usually it's more than that. What was once hard is now an adventure. What was once tedious is now an opportunity to practice a kind of discipline. I think a lot about The Karate Kid these days with Mr. Miyage saying "Wax on, wax off." That's a practice, one that builds patience, strength, skill and gets you a nice shiny car.

There's a practice that I sometimes do called "Soul Collage" in which you allow the alchemical process of selecting images and putting them together in a collage on a 5x7 piece of cardboard to work it's magic. As we move toward the Fall Equinox, I'm remembering that back at the Winter Solstice, I got together with my spirit sister Grace and did some Soul Collage. The card I ended up making I titled "Everyday Practice." It speaks to me about the power of everyday practice — something I'd aspired to but never really achieved. An everyday altar practice, prayer practice, self-care practice. All these energies right there in this card that I've had in my field of vision on and off since then. I've had it out for the entire period of the fast. Part of the Soul Collage process is to have the person sitting opposite you hold the card so you can see it from a bit of a distance. And then you speak sentences that begin with the words: I am the one who....

I am the one who now has an Everyday Practice — a practice that acknowledges the Oneness of all things, where washing the celentro is as sacred an act as standing at my altar offering prayers of healing for all beings and for the planet. I am the one who lives an intentional life and for whom the path of consciousness is unfolding. I offer the fruits of my practice to the healing of the planet. Mitakuye Oyasin, All My Relations, Tikkun Olam