Meditation
Meditation
A Jewishly inspired meditation circle, with alternating participant leadership meets each week throughout the year. The first 15 minutes is dedicated to individual movement meditation or sitting, followed by a ten minute teaching to inspire the final 30 minute silence. We mostly meet in the library at CBI. During Covid times, via Zoom each Thursday morning at 8am. Alison leads the first Thursday of the month. Everyone welcome.
Meditation
A Jewishly inspired meditation circle, with alternating participant leadership meets each week throughout the year. The first 15 minutes is dedicated to individual movement meditation or sitting, followed by a ten minute teaching to inspire the final 30 minute silence. We mostly meet in the library at CBI. During Covid times, via Zoom each Thursday morning at 8am. Alison leads the first Thursday of the month. Everyone welcome.
What’s in the Temple?
In the quiet spaces of my mind a thought lies still, but ready to spring.
It begs me to open the door so it can walk about.
The poets speak in obscure terms pointing madly at the unsayable.
The sages say nothing, but walk ahead patting their thigh calling for us to follow.
The monk sits pen in hand poised to explain the cloud of unknowing.
The seeker seeks, just around the corner from the truth.
If she stands still it will catch up with her.
Pause with us here a while.
Listen for the whisper of knowing there.
Love will touch you if you are very still.
If I say the God word, people run away.
They’ve been frightened—sat on ‘till the spirit cried “uncle.”
Now they play hide and seek with somebody they can’t name.
They know he’s out there looking for them, and they want to be found,
But there is still all this stuff in the way.
I can’t talk about God and make any sense,
And I can’t not talk about God and make any sense.
So we talk about the weather, and we are talking about God.
I miss the old temples where you could hang out with God.
Still, we have pet pounds where you can feel love draped in warm fur,
And sense the whole tragedy of life and death.
You see there the consequences of carelessness,
And you feel there the yapping urgency of life that wants to be lived.
The only things lacking are the frankincense and myrrh.
We don’t build many temples anymore.
Maybe we learned that the sacred can’t be contained.
Or maybe it can’t be sustained inside a building.
Buildings crumble.
It’s the spirit that lives on.
If you had a temple in the secret spaces of your heart,
What would you worship there?
What would you bring to sacrifice?
What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies?
Go there now.
~Tom Barrett
