‘Tis the Season to Go Bonkers!

’tis the season to go bonkers! So, do you have really good friends? Someone with whom to hang out when you’re not feeling social, or dazzling, or even remotely chipper?

The Holy Daze is upon us. Perhaps especially at this time, the beautiful dark time between fall equinox and winter solstice, a beautiful but sometimes lonely time, perhaps far away from family, or even worse, right in the midst of family where real contact has been missing for years … having a community of practice, what the Buddhists call a sangha, may make the precarious ride back into the light so much more doable.

Something wild is happening with the current yearlong program participants. People are actually spending regular time in practice with each other.

What are you noticing now? they ask each other. Where in the body? Move with that. Now move some more. Add breath and sound. Better now?Maybe not, but more here now.

Weird stuff, according to popular culture. Totally my kind of stuff though. I have done various forms of regular peer practice, movement and otherwise, for decades.

But what to name these life generating, sanity saving, deep diving meetings in the midst of another crazy day of futile wrestling with the never ending to-do list? These to-be places for shaking the frustration of mind numbing minutiae? These moments when another world opens up underneath the world of everyday forgetting?

(My friend Lysa, she says it’s preschool for grown-ups.)

Not your cup of tea? Honestly, what would you rather be doing? Let me know, okay?

Until we roam together in the fields of the soul, may you have many opportunities to play with your sangha.

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.

–Helen Keller