In the last few lines of Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen sings, “That even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.” This line caught my attention,  revealing  to me an important paradox about the game of growth.  For years, I was in thrall to the idea that if I could  eliminate everything I perceived as  negative,  the absence of flaws would enable me to praise with a pure heart and to receive and feel the warmth of Love in its many forms. I was convinced that the  success of my efforts lived on the other side of these perceived flaws. Instead, it seems to me growth lives in  the capacity to praise, to have a Lord of Song before which to stand,  and to know that—broken or otherwise— Hallelujah might just be the point. 

And what is the thread that holds such suffering together? Where are the threads within this single garment of destiny that offer glimpses of light? That lead, if not to Jerusalems gate, then to the suburbs or to anything remotely Heaven-adjacent? What is the thread I follow, like a dim beacon, through the darkness of modern times? I hold fast to the thread of Love, but that sounds trite, even to my own ears. After all,  the thread of Love has many faces and many moods. Sometimes I follow the thread of surrender, Love’s face of allow, accept, and yield to what is, rather than what I think should be. Sometimes, the thread of Love is the thread of action, the thread of one foot in front of the other, of taking what one of my mentors calls “the next faithful step.” Sometimes, the thread of Love looks like entertainment and joyful distractions that create just enough distance from my concerns for hope to seep through the cracks of my broken heart while I am watching a comedian on stage or a TV drama unfold that will actually be resolved with a happy ending in 45 minutes. Sometimes the thread of Love wears the face of a compassionate friend willing to listen deeply, to empathize and to hold space for the great unburdening that comes in and through shared moments of uncertainty, anxiety and confusion. And of course, sometimes the thread of love is a good ugly-cry for all the brokenness of the world over which I have no control, but through which my humanity is touched, shattered and time again returned to the wholeness of my true nature, renewed with reminders of how precious and daring it is to care. 

For those of you who teach, I hope this entry  helps remind you that the seeds you are planting in your classes— be those seeds anatomical, philosophical or attitudinal— may not grow roots and break through the ground of a student’s practice and field of appreciation  until much later down the road. As a student, I hope these reflections help you trust the process you are in so that you can offer yourself some grace in  learning moments  that are boring, overwhelming, or that may seem irrelevant in the moment. I hope that  such grace will help you remember that the value of the lessons you are being presented now may unfold in unpredictable ways further along your journey.  

My spiritual teacher was an art enthusiast and in the last years of his life, he sold Asian antiquities and spiritually-inspired art of all kinds. As a result of his passion in art, many of us in the sangha became collectors. One of the informal rituals of visiting one another often involves touring one another’s homes and art collections. Many of us have paintings and prints from the same artists. I have always been intrigued by the way that each of us chooses different mats, frames, and placements for the same image. It’s a perfect metaphor for community, I think. On the one hand, we have a similar experience or picture— life with a teacher, studying the teachings and engaging a set of practices. But each one of us has a different frame around the picture, chooses a mat that highlights a different color within the image, and places the picture in a different place within our home or ongoing lived experience. 

Solidarity in suffering matters to me. 

Relationships matter to me. 

Connection matters to me. 

These are the values I care about. These are the values in which I have faith and around which I plan to continue to orient myself and by which I will take my bearings. 

It’s been a heavy week, but I do have to say, I have talked to my friends more than usual and connected more deeply with a few casual acquaintances. While  making small talk feels harder than it often does and the hum of anxiety has been impossible to ignore, I have found refuge in showing up to my usual activities with a heightened commitment to kindness and presence. I looked out into the gallery of one of my online classes and realized that many of us in the class have been practicing asana together online since March 2020. I commented to a few of them after class that “I feel like we managed the pandemic together making these shapes we call asana and we now have another set of circumstances to weather together.”

I, for one, don’t intend to stop caring- about my own sanity and well-being or about yours. I, for one, will continue to cultivate the capacity for presence, for connection, and for faith in small acts of kindness that move me forward in, and through, love. Whether it is time at the gym, on my yoga mat, on my cushion, writing in my journal, walking my dog, or having meals with my friends, I plan to keep going, a little bit at a time, over a long period of time. 

All right. That’s it for now. Let me know how you are doing and where your grief and caring lives.

But I do know that moments of expansion are always possible. I used to have a much more simplistic relationship to spirituality and faith than I do now, characterized by a kind of transactional vantage point that had at its heart an assumption that prayer “worked” and that blessings would rain down in the form of a turn of circumstances toward the recognizably good and the immediately preferable. Whatever vestiges of that child-like perspective that were left in my psyche were worn away in the pandemic, as the death toll mounted in the face of prayer vigils, lit candles, and people of all faiths were swept into a global suffering.  And, weirdly enough, today over half of voting America does feel like God answered their prayers. So there is also that.

What I think now is that expansion- a movement toward depth, compassion, care, dignity, understanding and Love  is always possible. Do I think it is probable? No. Do I think it is easy? No. Do I think it is  likely? No. Am I always able to access it? Also, no. 

So, with all that, I hope that you have found (or will find) a few guiding questions of your own this week that will help you cope. I hope that the answer to “what is my next faithful step” involves time on your mat, good food with people you care about, long walks in nature, a voting plan, and large and small acts that help you keep your heart open and your connection to yourself and others alive.

Truth be told, many days I come to my mat or my cushion more aware of my broken pieces than my wholeness. And because I can only start from where I actually am, rather than where I wish I was, invoking my already-present enlightenment seems far-fetched at best or like a bold-faced lie at worst. And, of course, I shouldn't ignore the reality that many of us practice for a desired outcome-- to feel better, to get stronger, to gain flexibility, to de-stress, to connect with self and others. All of those are good things so I can't imagine the text is saying these reasons are bad somehow. And there is the very real layer of personality that may be "God arising as neurosis” but is also causing us and/or others harm and could use a little work. So that layer is also true.

And look, to be clear, I am not new. I know that many of the suggested do’s and don’ts of various pathways may be similar. In all my wanderings, I have yet to find any mystical path that suggests harming self and others is a viable route to the Supreme in the same way that I have not found any healthy food plan recommending a steady diet of Twinkies and Doritos, no matter how much I might hope for that. I know much of what I am writing about is easy to say and hard to embody. And yet, I am delighted, enlivened, and dare I say “saved” these days by the reminders of some of the fundamental tenets of practice and for the Grace that such viewpoints offer in times where the surface of life holds so much proof of the opposite.

Instead I have a hope in the process of loving, in the value of growing into my capacity to show up for him with tenderness. I have hope in Love’s power to redeem my hardened heart so that I can lay down my own sword of childish resentment and refrain from endlessly litigating my case against him for his shortcomings and the ways they hurt me over the years. I have hope in the power of my whole-hearted engagement to uplift, to redeem, and to restore wholeness—both mine and his. I have hope in the power of prayer to bolster and support me. I have hope in the way that ordinary encounters prove me to me again and again that God does not live in the sky, but instead comes to life in and through people and reality just as it is. I have hope in the power of practice and the ongoing return to Love that I believe sincere practice over time promises. I have hope in the premise that no act of Love is ever wasted.

Perhaps the biggest hallmark of aging (and I like to think maturing a bit along the way) is that the shadow elements no longer serve as reasons to stop engaging the process of practice or learning and studying the maps the Great Ones have given. I am no longer looking for a light that doesn’t cast a shadow. I no longer let the shadows determine how I feel about the light. Instead, I know that light and dark come together in this realm, that every teaching can be exploited, every high comes with a corresponding low, every peak has a a trough, and even the most detailed map can only outline the journey and point the way. A

The movement toward  growth inside a longing to love fully  is how I relate  to what before felt “spiritual” and now just seems like the extra-ordinary possibility inherent in being human. Spirituality, for me, is the “extra” in the ordinary where life is made extraordinary, not because of something fantastical, exalted, or outside of my life, but because the immediacy of life is Grace-soaked— sanctified through attention, intention, reverence, recognition and the willingness to return again and again to the questions that most move me forward— How can I love more fully? What inside this situation is holy? How can I truly serve?

Skill, in this case, does not mean the skill of being super-competent or doing fancy poses or being popular on Instagram, all of which are wonderful things. Here, we are talking about  the skill of being able to act in the world in accordance with one's Highest recognitions, one's deepest understandings, and one's most expansive inclinations. We are talking about the skill of bringing our efforts to Grace and being carried by the larger currents with which one aligns themselves. 


If Life is always communicating with me, how does it speak? If Life is always communicating with me, am I listening? If Life is always communicating with me, how do I best respond?

These precious moments arise in the midst of the awkward silences and are scattered between the repeating comments that reveal his cognitive impairment and signal the movement away from the Dad I once knew. These moments cannot be forced or coerced, but they can be invited by curiosity, nourished through patience, and appreciated in the tenderness of love.

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Yeah, one would think that, based on the slew of slogans and promises offered in the marketplace of  yoga. From “Live your Best Life”  to “Dare to Dharma Dream,” spiritual transformation  is packaged and sold as though each one of us, through healthy habits and a few life hacks, could craft ourselves into an optimized, high-performance version of who we are where all of our rough edges are smooth, our idiosyncratic features no longer annoy others, we are always hydrated, and we make money without working. 

I don’t regret the long years of adhering to forms, learning standards, and practicing within structures. On the whole, I was more served than damaged from the way I was “brought up” in yoga. And, I am very grateful to have expanded beyond that upbringing to grow more into myself and my own opinions in a way that allows me to use what came before while not being limited by it. 

Personally, I think most teachers I work with forget about the second part of the formula. If you come to my class I want to meet you where you are. I also want to offer any insight I have that might help you go further-- whether that “further” is resting more, learning some more, working harder, refining a pose, and/or finding a good modification/alternative for a posture.

And, you know, while the possibility of the "blank slate" can be useful at the New Year, I believe that transformation is possible any day of the year and sometimes the best "starting again" happens in the privacy of my own heart.