When I am working in the Little Temple at our home, I light a pillar candle on the altar. At dinnertime we light a candelabra at the table. In the deepest dark of the year, I keep a taper in the kitchen window that faces the sunrise. I light it in the dark before dawn, sort of calling the sun to rise, or blowing it a kiss-of-light. We burn a lot of candles here. Each fall I place a big order for what I hope will be a year's supply of hand-poured beeswax candles from the same small company at their Black Friday sale.
This year my deliciously-scented box arrived with a note tucked that I don't remember seeing before. It suggested that after burning a pillar, I use my hands to press the soft rim inward if the wick has burned much below the rim. This allows the heat of the flame better access to the wax so the candle burns more evenly, doesn't become a wick down at the bottom of a tunnel, and you don't end up with a leftover rim and no wick at the end.
I've long had the ritual of standing at the altar before yoga, counsel, meditation, or bodywork to light the candle. After folks depart I burn a little lavender or rosemary that grew here, beside the house. The ashes and matches sit in abalone shells that I gathered long ago on a beach. I love this ritual. Now there is another element to the ritual. I gaze at the candle, cup it in my hands, and shape it. In the candle that's burning now the wick is a smidge off center, so one side is burning faster than the other. I am therefore shaping the thicker side that didn't melt as quickly, pressing it forward, offering its wax to the flame. This small ritual of care is such a joy: the moments to pause with the candle and consider it, the practice of applying careful pressure to shape it lovingly with my hands, the lingering scent of beeswax on my fingers and palms.Investing this care in the shape of the candle makes burning it more relational; there is more intimacy and investment, more cherishing. Spending a few seconds of tending makes the whole process more meaningful.
The image of my current altar candle, above, is not a great model for the results of this process! This candle was living in a tall glass hurricane stand on the sideboard and I didn't think to bring this mindful care to it for most of its life. When I noticed
that the sideboard candle's wick was burning down deep in a way the altar candle doesn't anymore, I swapped them so that I could tend this one with more ease. I thought about swapping them for the photograph, and then I decided that this embodiment of imperfection was just right for speaking of an altar at which I sing
Forget your perfect offering, oh-oh-oh oh-oh
Right the bells that still can ring, oh-oh-oh oh-oh
There is a crack in everything, oh-oh-oh oh-oh
That's how
the light
gets in.
Love,
Dahlia
PS. I sing an adaptation by Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney of Leonard Cohen's Anthem. It's not quite this one, but it's close.
PPS. I would like to spend some time working in the SF Bay Area this spring. I'd like to come down and have a few days where folks can meet with me for 1:1 sessions. I'd love to host a couple of yoga sessions and/or meditation gatherings. If you have or know of a space I could borrow or rent, I'd be glad to hear from you. Three kinds of space could be useful:
- A small, warm private space where two people can meet during the day for the counsel, private yoga, and bodywork. I've done this in friends' homes and in my hotel room.
- A medium, warm private space where 10-20 people could gather, seated, to share meditation on an evening or weekend. A spacious livingroom could work nicely, with some folks on couches and some on the ground. We can ask folks to bring a cushion to sit on.
- A big, warm space where 10-20 people could gather to share yoga.
If you have or know of a space I could borrow or rent in April or May, I'd be glad to hear from you.
Resources are Love in Action
The Mystery at the Heart of the Galaxy
Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is a vast, swirling spiral consisting of perhaps 100-400 billion stars. For the past 50 years scientific theory has been that at the center of that swirl is a supermassive black hole. This NASA video aims to help comprehend the size of supermassive black holes in under two minutes.
A new theory published by the Royal astronomical society last week posits that actually, what lies at the heart of the Milky Way may be a massive hunk of dark matter. The way that humanity's growing scientific knowledge is a manifestation of curiosity, attention, rumination, and collaboration at large scale makes my heart sing.
Ring the Bells
I've been sitting here thinking how to frame this next thing. It's just a sentence! I encountered it on an Instagram post from the 3.5% campaign, which"is inspired by research showing that when just 3.5% of people engage in sustained non-violent resistance, real political change follows." I sought to find the origin of the phrase before sharing it with you and it looks like it comes from Gopal Dayeneni of Movement Generation, a justice and ecology project. I cannot find the precise source, but I see it attributed to him by others.
Migration is an earth right.
I choke up every time I think of it. On the post where I first saw it, it was simply laid over a video of migrating geese. In searching for the origin I saw it in a mural and in many voices. It resonates so profoundly: life moves. We belong to the life of the Earth, and life moves. Migration is an earth right. * shiver * Thanks to Jenifer
Cherishing
The poem I've been reading in my yoga classes this week is Mary Oliver's "Summer Morning". We're far from summer, but the poem is apt for this moment. It's from Red Bird, as have been all the poems I've read the last few weeks. Mary was partners for over 40 years with Molly Malone Cook, until her death in 2005. Red Bird came out in 2008, and you can feel in it how Mary's endless cherishing is tinged with grief. It has felt like the right work for the last few weeks: turning to the light while honoring the ache.
Summer Morning
Heart,
I implore you,
it’s time to come back
from the dark,
it’s morning,
the hills are pink
and the roses
whatever they felt
in the valley of night
are opening now
their soft dresses,
their leaves
are shining.
Why are you laggard?
Sure you have seen this
a thousand times,
which isn’t half enough.
Let the world
have its way with you,
luminous as it is
with mystery
and pain–
graced as it is
with the ordinary.
Resistance is Love in Action
Inspiration
“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” - Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 1964
Loving Words as Resistance
Community Care as Resistance
I've been encouraging the idea of community care as a form of resistance, and the moms in Minneapolis who are supporting families are going all in; what began with diapers and food leveled up to breast milk when a 16 year old was left with the care of her infant sister after their mom was taken. This is a beautiful example of the vitality of social support.
Protesting
The next No Kings protests are scheduled for March 28.
I've been hearing from some folks that they are afraid to protest because of the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, so I think it's important for us to say to each other that those people died died bravely putting their bodies in the path of federal ICE agents. That's heroic – and very different than attending a peaceful protest. Most large-scale protests are joyful events, with an atmosphere like a festival. Children, elderly folks, music and song; protests are some of the most life-affirming events I have experienced.
This snapshot carefully hides faces. It shows one of the canes of the lovely 84 year old woman who stood beside me as I manned a bucket of visibility flags by a crosswalk as part of our Indivisible group's Safety Team. She told me that during the Civil Rights marches she'd had young children and didn't get out, but now she thought that she could get out there for an hour. With her two canes. Behind her is a woman who arrived with her partner, their poodle – and her oxygen tank, rolling along. My favorite moment of that protest was when a child wearing a hooded unicorn onesie walked over to a man wearing an inflatable costume that made it look like he was riding a unicorn. The unicorn man had a box of tambourines he was giving away, and the unicorn child accepted one and then trotted happily back to the adults she had come to the march with. I've got one of those tambourines, too, now; it's in the temple and I look forward to shaking it again March 28.
Ezra Levin, one of the founders of Indivisible, had some great words in a recent email about the purpose of the No Kings Marches:
"Specifically, No Kings is designed to do three things:
Model defiance on a national scale. Optimism in the face of fascism is one of the most accessible forms of defiance. The regime’s plan is to scare everyone into submission. But millions of people taking to the streets calls the regime's bluff, and is a powerful display of optimistic noncompliance.
Create social proof that opposition is widespread. Humans are social animals. We follow each other. A massive demonstration of popular opposition helps reinforce that wherever you are, you’re not alone. Courage is contagious, but it only spreads if people see it.
Recruit folks who were not previously active. People-powered movements depend on new people flooding into their local organizing home. From ICE watch to mutual aid to advocacy to electoral work, everyone starts somewhere, and each No Kings is the entry point for millions to get involved beyond one day of protest."
Yum.
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