These Are The Days it Never Rains But It Pours

The word "retreat" has been on my mind this week that has seemed like just too much mindless running on a treadmill. I even looked up a Zen retreat in Santa Fe--still thinking about that one. Several quiet days of not doing could do me a world of good. Yes, that's a romantic view of it. I know it's harder than it looks. I'd be wrestling with urges to seek out entertainment that couldn't be found, no Facebook or YouTube to fritter away the hours. Who knows what else would bubble up when all other distractions were limited? And still, I could go.

I received an email requesting my submission for the Parent Council newsletter of my children's school. The sender apologetically asked for our blurbs so that she could get this newsletter out in this busy time of year. What makes this time particularly busy? I don't deny it, but what? Is it the hustle and bustle of Valentine's? President's Day? The incredibly beautiful intimation of spring we've got going on outside even as I write? The only thing that makes it busy is us.

Looking for some solace, and probably some escape, I stumbled on the exquisite performance of "Under Pressure" with David Bowie and the mystery performer who says as much when she cuts off the sound as she does belting it out. Who is she? If you know, let me in on the secret. There are a couple of lines I swear I heard for the first time, "It's the terror of knowing what this world's all about," hits me with a sense of what we see when we strip away our pretenses and ideas about what's what. Seeing. And then transcending an old-fashioned, romantic notion of love for something that dares us to care "for the people on the edge of the night" as well as for ourselves in a new way.  The song recharges me with its undercurrent urgency.

This morning I allowed myself to wake naturally. With every intention of planning out a yoga class for this Sunday community that's gathering momentum, I sat down with coffee in hand and laptop in lap. I did a quick check of some blogs and took a peek into one I don't read as often, Mind Deep. The author has posted a number of videos of Jon Kabat-Zin. Telling myself I didn't have time for this, I don't have time to spend an hour watching a video on meditation, no, I've got a yoga class to prepare, I've got to correct a stack of spelling tests and homework assignments and make Valentine's cards for each of my 27 students, and read my assignment for class this week, and look up restaurants to celebrate V-Day with my significant others, and, and, and, and I'm glad I watched the entire clip.  Retreat! Drop everything! What is THIS? (I don't know!)

Maybe you don't have the time either, but dip your toes in for a few minutes and see.   If you can watch the entire clip, there's some good insight in the last ten minutes about being human when Kabat-Zin mentions Philip Zimbardo and a lecture entitled "The Banality of Evil." At the very least, this clip did me good in the way Bowie does, in giving me a motive to take up meditation that has nothing to do with attaining enlightenment and everything to do with simply finding an awareness of what THIS is, and looking love in the face when it dares you to change your way of caring for yourself.