Last Sweat Your Prayers 2020 this morning, in Zoom-land and live in the garden we covered ourselves in white, called in the promise of light. A hope, a dream, a spark at the end of this long and winding tunnel.

If it wasn’t for death and disparity and distress. If 10,000 people world-wide every day were not dying of this virus. If it wasn’t that 20,000,000 human beings are currently infected with Covid. Grief and tragedy and heartbreak.

Been learning from avowed hermits lately. Not recluses, who isolate out of basic human disdain. But hermits. Who live a life oriented to solitude, filling extra time with contemplative practice rather than social interaction.

In a year when much has been lost, we turn to gratitude Thursday. We give thanks for all we still have. Which is what I really want to write about this morning. But first this invitation. I bet you have food on your table. Probably in abundance.

On my way to an inquiry about fully inhabiting the power of being, I was kidnapped by the word fluency. I’ve taught classes aplenty on the rhythm of flow. I wanted another way in, a quality more all encompassing than feminine, circles, receptive, earth, interior, dark, inhale, continuous, weighted.

All last week I waited. Paralyzed. Obsessed by a future hanging in the balance. Where were you Saturday when the election news came down? I bet we’ll always remember. I was buying poblano peppers at the Ferry Building Market in San Francisco. A sun drenched crowd erupted in spontaneous acclaim. I love California.

Friday morning. Sitting fireside. Feeling more hopeful than I have in a week. Sensing how long the road is in front of us. Mega healing and repair. Uncertainty. Despair. Exhaustion.

Jeanne Lohmann’s poem What The Day Gives inspired me, gave voice to what has been astonishing me all week. I hope this serve as inspiration for you this morning. Her poem is interspersed in this musing:

Suddenly, sun. Over my shoulder

in the middle of gray November

what I hoped to do comes back, asking.

On Saturday nights, Social Distance Theater has been holding parking lot converted to courtyard space in a funky 25th & R warehouse complex. Pre-pandemic it housed two theaters, the Poetry Center and various workshop rooms. Now it is an outdoor haven for live musicians to offer their craft to a few scattered patrons in the balm of a Sacramento summer night. What will happen when winter hems us in?

Six months ago on Mother’s Day my daughter gave me a special gift: StoryWorth. Every week a question comes to my in my inbox and I write a story, often a family memory. At the end of the year 52 stories will be compiled in a book.

Seated with friends around a big table, sharing food, laughter, conversation. From the outside, a scenario that appears entirely normal. But now there are visible signs of change: this physical distance thing and safe dining etiquette and masks on-off and pandemic talk. But still it pretty much looks like it used to.

The physical practice of yoga captured my attention in 1971 at U.C.S.F. during my final physical therapy year. A progressive instructor introduced it as an exercise modality and I fell in love with sun salutations at the same time I fell in love with anatomy. When I moved to Sacramento after graduation there were no yoga studios, so I started my regular living room practice with Lilias Folan on PBS.

I opened the leather console abutting my driver’s seat and spied a lime green pouch I’d forgotten. I knew what was in there. I zipped it open and somberly withdrew three keys, each haphazardly labeled with the door it opened. One for Centered---closed, another for Epic----closed, a third for Clara---?. Sigh. Evidence again. Everyday there is change. The new normal is that there is no normal.

This world’s rocking us. For a breath or two, feel that right here. Just shift your weight right. Feel the momentary relief of settling into “new normal” on one side. Then feel the rug pulled out as you move left. Don’t settle there. Now shift right. Back and forth. Back and forth. Until the rug pull itself is the “new normal.” Keep rocking. Keep rocking until maybe you just become the change itself.

I heard the term “collective effervescence” in a recent podcast and goose bumps rose on my skin. It resonated utterly familiar but ironically unnamed. We all know this: when the atmosphere magically crystallizes at a concert, a ballpark, a festival. Durkheim, a French sociologist, coined the term in reference to religious gatherings. He observed that song and rhythm connect people to create moments of unified transcendence. Any shared experience of collective emotion unifies a group.

Moving on my mat, the Tahoe earth held me last week. When I rested, stretched out looking at trees and sky, a thought dropped into the empty space. How does that happen? But there it was: I’m smack dab in the midst of one crazy initiation into the eighth decade of life. What a friggin’ absurd transition: decade change + pandemic. I’m a meaning-making animal. Maybe you are, too. What in the world could this juxtaposition signify?

Been thinking about resiliency. The way we desperately need it right now. What it takes to build it. This gratitude-filled surprise to feel the most resilient I’ve ever felt in my life. I kid you not. Curious musing here about why that might be, starting with the dictionary definition.

Resilience: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness; the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape

On Mother’s Day this year, my astute and thoughtful daughter gifted me with StoryWorth, an ingenious writing program encouraging family elders to tell the stories that comprise a life. Each week I get a new prompt. After 52 weeks StoryWorth binds the responses into a book. Last week it was “How and when did you decide to have children?” A few weeks before it was “Are you more like your father or your mother? In what ways?”

This morning I woke in residual panic, breathlessness that remains when a call, desperate to place, at last goes through. My eyes wince softly in the spare morning light. Long seconds pass before I realize I’ve been dreaming. Funny how even strange dreams seem so banal at first glance. Not this one. I rose to capture the disappearing wisps.

Before I relate these two “called out” stories, I want to call you in. Wanna drop in to a communal ritual of embodied healing? Give your body the love and care and nourishment it needs in order to thrive? Essentials is there for you three Tuesdays in August: 4, 11, 18. I am totally ready to meet you on the mat. Bonus: recorded session available after each class. Check the link for info, Zoom enroll, payment.