The Grace of Responsibility & Doing What You Can (mostly) March 25, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Faith, Gratitude, Healing Stories, Hope, Karma Yoga, Lent, Life, Music, One Hoop, Pain, Peace, Philosophy, Ramadan, Religion, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Yoga.Tags: Alabama, Chaitra Navaratri, Great Lent, Kushmanda, Lent, Ramadan, Ramadān, Season for Nonviolence, Season of Non-violence, Selma to Montgomery, Yoga Sutras 2.1-2.2
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“Nine days and nine nights of blessings and happiness if you are celebrating Chaitra Navaratri!” “Ramadān Mubarak, Blessed Ramadān!” to anyone who is observing the holy month of Ramadān. Blessings to anyone observing Lent or Great Lent! Many blessings to all during this “Season for Non-violence” and all other seasons!
“… to all of the freedom-loving people who have assembled here this afternoon from all over our nation and from all over the world: Last Sunday, more than eight thousand of us started on a mighty walk from Selma, Alabama. We have walked through desolate valleys and across the trying hills. We have walked on meandering highways and rested our bodies on rocky byways. Some of our faces are burned from the outpourings of the sweltering sun. Some have literally slept in the mud. We have been drenched by the rains. [Audience:] (Speak) Our bodies are tired and our feet are somewhat sore.
But today as I stand before you and think back over that great march, I can say, as Sister Pollard said—a seventy-year-old Negro woman who lived in this community during the bus boycott—and one day, she was asked while walking if she didn’t want to ride. And when she answered, ‘No,’ the person said, ‘Well, aren’t you tired?’ And with her ungrammatical profundity, she said, ‘My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.’ (Yes, sir. All right) And in a real sense this afternoon, we can say that our feet are tired, (Yes, sir) but our souls are rested.
They told us we wouldn’t get here. And there were those who said that we would get here only over their dead bodies, (Well. Yes, sir. Talk) but all the world today knows that we are here and we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama saying, “We ain’t goin’ let nobody turn us around.” (Yes, sir. Speak) [Applause]”
– quoted from the “How Long? Not Long” speech* by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
*NOTE: This speech is also known as the “Our God Is Marching On!” speech.
Please join me for a 90-minute virtual yoga practice on Zoom today (Saturday, March 25th) at 12:00 PM. Use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or by emailing myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.
Saturday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “03242021 Selma to Montgomery”]
In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)
### GET CREATIVE & HELP THE ARC BEND ###
FTWMI:… some Powerball® thoughts March 19, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Healing Stories, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Music, One Hoop, Poetry, Twin Cities, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.Tags: Andy Greene, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Beecher, Dave Van Ronk, Elvis Presley, Jacques Levy, lottery, Mbube, Powerball®, Robert Allen Zimmerman, Rubin Carter, Season for Nonviolence, Season of Non-violence, Solomon Linda, Timothy Hampton, Tony Glover, twists
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Peace and blessings to all, and especially to those observing Lent, Great Lent, and the Baháʼí 19-Day Fast during this “Season for Non-violence” and all other seasons! Happy New Year, to those who are celebrating!
For Those Who Missed It: This is an abridged (and then revised and expanded) version of a 2022 post that primarily focused on “Winning the Lottery.” Some elements of this post also overlap with the 2023 Purim post. Some embedded links connect to websites outside of my blog.
“The problem with this answering line is that the world of the blues that seems to be evoked by the idiom and form of this song is generally not a world in which one’s baby goes off to a ‘foreign land.’ African American blues singers in the tradition that Dylan is building on here may sing about their baby going off to Chicago, or New Orleans, or Natchez. But not on a trip abroad: that’s an experience that, at this particular moment, is still mostly the province of a modern, educated, Caucasian upper middle class…. Dylan goes on to claim in good rural language that he’ll ‘get lucky’ or ‘die tryin’ ’ as he rambles to reach his beloved. ”
– quoted from “II. Ramblin’ Boy: ‘Protest’ and the Art of Adaptation” in Bob Dylan’s Poetics: How the Songs Work by Timothy Hampton
I recently heard a young, up-and-coming artist compare achieving a huge milestone to winning the lottery. For sure, I can see that. Especially when you consider how many people commented on the fact that this artist hit this much deserved milestone before his much lauded collaborator. (Don’t misunderstand me, I’m a big fan of both artists, but there’s something more than talent at play here.) I think having a hit song is also like that. Because while there is a lot of hard work that goes into creating a hit song, there’s also a lot of luck. It’s like that old adage: you can’t win if you don’t play. Of course, most people who play, don’t win – at least not really big – and it’s the same thing with being a big star in music.
The existence of streaming services and social media means that a lot of hustle and marketing on the part of the artist (and their community) can get an artist noticed today, in a way they couldn’t get noticed 20-plus years ago. That attention can really push a song up the charts. However, we’re still in a time time when songs are hits (in part) because they are played on the radio. And for all that hustle, many songs are played on the radio because of the way the musician looks. This is true across genres. This is even more so when it comes to music in and from certain countries and cultures. Being talented and having the “right” size, complexion, ethnicity, and (on a certain level) gender and sexuality, is like hitting the Powerball®.
“The Multi-State Lottery Association encourages all lottery players to be responsible in their amount of play.
For some people gambling can become a problem. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, there are a number of helpful resources listed below.
National Council on Problem Gambling
24 Hour Confidential National Helpline
Call: 1-800-522-4700
Chat: ncpgambling.org/chat
Text: 1-800-522-4700
Association of Problem Gambling Service Administrators”
– quoted from the “Play Responsibly” tab on the Powerball® website
While I’ve been known to play bingo in a church basement (for charity and the chance to win a homemade quilt), I’m not really one to play the lottery. My limited understanding is that there’s a lot of different ways you can win with a Powerball®. However, just like with music and other things that could make you wealthy beyond your dreams, you have to be responsible and avoid the scams. You have to balance the temptation and your desire with reality. The reality, again, being that if you don’t play, you don’t win; but most people don’t win… big.
If you’re talented and have the aforementioned equivalent of the Powerball®, you can do things other people can’t do. You can write songs that make people re-think the world. You can sing songs other people not only wouldn’t think to sing, but might be afraid to sing. You can inspire people to sing your songs… even when they don’t always understand you. To me, Bob Dylan and his eponymous first album are a great example of a musical Powerball®.
“I walked down there and ended up
In one of them coffee-houses on the block
I get on the stage to sing and play
Man there said, ‘Come back some other day
You sound like a hillbilly
We want folksingers here’”
– quoted from the song “Talkin’ New York” by Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan’s debut studio album, Bob Dylan, was released today (March 19th) in 1962. I didn’t use it for the anniversary this last year – because I thought it would distract from [the] sūtra study – but, normally I use one of the playlists that I also use on Bob Dylan’s birthday (hint, hint). It’s a playlist that combines music from the original album – which only included two original Bob Dylan songs – with Bob Dylan songs covered and/or made famous by others. It’s a good way, I think, to highlight the fact that Dylan is as inspired as he is inspirational.
Bob Dylan, the album, was recorded on November 20th and 22nd of 1961. In addition to the two original Dylan songs (“Talkin’ New York” and “Song to Woody”), there were eleven covers or traditional folk songs (including Negro spirituals). While Bob Dylan did arrange some of the folk songs, there’s one arrangement that he famously, uhmm… “borrowed” (without permission) from folk singer Dave Van Ronk. Exactly a month after recording the album, Bob Dylan had an informal recording session in a Minneapolis, Minnesota hotel room with Bonnie Beecher and Tony Glover. Those bootleg recordings may or may not have been distributed out of someone’s trunk; but, they were the equivalent of modern-day artists streaming their music. They got people excited about Bob Dylan as a musician and may be considered a better glimpse (than the studio album) of what was to come from the artist.
The bootleg recordings did not, however, drum up enough attention to really sell Bob Dylan. The album has never been super popular (chart wise) in the US or the UK. Neither did it, initially, receive a lot of critical recognition or attention. Part of the lack of interest, at the time it was released, may have been because it sounded nothing like what was popular at the time. According to a Rolling Stone article by Andy Greene, “[The album came out at] the height of ‘The Twist’ dance craze, and 11 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart had the word ‘twist’ in the title, including “Dear Lady Twist” by Gary U.S. Bonds, “Twistin’ The Night Away’ by Sam Cooke, “Hey, Let’s Twist” by Joey Dee and the Starlighters, “Twistin’ Postman” by the Marvelettes and “Alvin Twist” by the Chipmunks.”
In addition to “Peppermint Twist,” also by Joey Dee and the Starlighters, which spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the airwaves at the time were filled with doowop artists like Gene Chandler; crooners like Ray Charles and Neil Sedaka; women like Connie Francis, Shelley Fabares, and Little Eva; Motown girl bands like The Shirelles; and boy bands like the Beach Boys and The Tokens (whose number one song at the beginning of 1962, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” is it’s own “lottery” cautionary tale). Of course, there was folk music; however, as Andy Greene pointed out, “To most of America, the Kingston Trio were the embodiment of folk music…. but [Dylan] sounded nothing like the Kingston Trio.” Then there was Elvis Presley… and some 1962 reviewers did compare Dylan – as well as his voice and his style – to Elvis Presley.
Which is weird to me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Bob Dylan fan (on a lot of different levels). I even dig that first album. However, the comparison to Elvis is curious, when you really think about it. At the time, maybe they were both just seen as young, eager singers changing the “face” of music – and I get that. They were also young, white singers making popular (city) music out of traditions associated with Black, poor, and/or rural America – and I get that comparison, too. However, it’s hard for me to not view them through the lens of history.
Elvis was a singer, a performer, an actor, and a U. S. veteran; but, he was never recognized as a songwriter. Most say that he didn’t even pen the songs on which he is credited as a co-writer. Also, he didn’t have a ton of protest songs associated with the anti-war and Civil Rights movements. Finally, Elvis never won, as Bob Dylan did in 2016, a Nobel Prize in Literature. In fact, (to me) the only thing Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley had in common in 1962, especially when compared to other also talented musicians at the time, was that elusive Powerball® of talent, drive, and other people’s perceptions.
“How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone”
– quoted from the song “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan
Please join me for a 65-minute virtual yoga practice on Zoom today (Sunday, March 19th) at 2:30 PM. Use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or by emailing myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.
Sunday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “05242022 ‘Bob’s Poems”]
“Here comes the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For somethin’ that he never done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he coulda been
The champion of the world”
– quoted from the song “Hurricane” by Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy
In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)
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Still Remembering Another (earlier and longer) Walk (mostly the music w/a link) March 12, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in 19-Day Fast, Baha'i, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Faith, Food, Gandhi, Healing Stories, Hope, Lent, Life, Music, One Hoop, Pain, Philosophy, Religion, Suffering, Wisdom, Yoga.Tags: Salt Satygraha, satya, satyagraha
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Many blessings to all, and especially to those observing Lent, Great Lent, and/or the Baháʼí 19-Day Fast during this “Season for Non-violence” and all other seasons!
“Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life. It is the only condiment of the poor. Cattle cannot live without salt. Salt is a necessary article in many manufactures. it is also a rich manure.
There is no article like salt, outside water, by taxing which the State can reach even the starving millions, the sick, the maimed and the utterly helpless. The salt tax constitutes the most inhuman poll tax that the ingenuity of man can devise.”
– quoted from a letter by M. K. Gandhi, printed in Young India, Vol. XII, Ahmedabad: February 27, 1930
Please join me for a 65-minute virtual yoga practice on Zoom today (Sunday, March 12th) at 2:30 PM. Use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or by emailing myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.
Sunday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “04062021 Salt Satyagraha”]
If you are interested, please check out my 2019 post about the Dandi Salt Satyagraha!
In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)
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Still Remembering a Too Short & Too Bloody Walk (mostly the music) March 7, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Books, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Faith, Healing Stories, Hope, One Hoop, Pain, Peace, Religion, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Yoga.Tags: Brenda Jones, John Lewis, Selma
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Happy Purim! Joyous Purnima (and “Choti Holi”)! Many blessings to all, and especially to those observing Lent, Great Lent, the Baháʼí 19-Day Fast, Purim, and/or Purnima during this “Season for Non-violence” and all other seasons!
“[Martin Luther King Jr.] was talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.
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Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem that soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must us it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.
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You must study and learn in the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, through decades and centuries before you…. Continue to build union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others.”
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– quoted from “Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation: Though I am gone, I urge you to answer that highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe”* in Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America by Congressman John Lewis with Brenda Jones
Please join me today (Tuesday, March 7th) at 12:00 PM or 7:15 PM for a yoga practice on Zoom. You can use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.
Tuesday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “03072021 Sunday Bloody Sunday Alabama”]
*NOTE: Originally published in The New York Times on July 30, 2020.
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In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)
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### “When you pray, move your feet. – AFRICAN PROVERB” ~ Rep. John Lewis ~ ###
FTWMI: Winning the Lottery, with some Powerball® thoughts (the “missing” Monday post) March 6, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, 19-Day Fast, Art, Baha'i, Bhakti, Books, Changing Perspectives, Confessions, Dharma, Faith, Food, Healing Stories, Hope, Kirtan, Lent, Life, Minneapolis, Movies, Music, Mysticism, Peace, Philosophy, Purim, Religion, Suffering, Wisdom, Women, Writing, Yoga.Tags: Aaron Koller, Bob Dylan, Hebrew, lottery, Maccabeats, Nissim Black, Powerball®, R'Shua, Søren Kierkegaard, Star Wars, Sting, Susanna Barkataki
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Happy Purim! Many blessings to all, and especially to those observing Lent, Great Lent, the Baháʼí 19-Day Fast, and/or Purim during this “Season for Non-violence” and all other seasons!
For Those Who Missed It: This “missing” post for Monday, March 6th, is an abridged version of a 2022 post about Purim. (But this is not the story you think it is!) A link to the original post is embedded below (at the point where I shortened it. There is also a lottery link that connects to an outside source. You can request an audio recording of any of these practices via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.
In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.
Check out the “Class Schedules” calendar for upcoming classes.)
“It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.”
– quoted from Journals (IV A 164), 1843 by Søren Kierkegaard
You know how there are some stories, like the Star Wars movies, that begin as one thing and then over time and generations become something else? That question can be answered as it relates to the story, but here I am specifically talking about the sequence.* When the original movie came out in May of 1977, it was just Star Wars. When the next movies came out – in May of 1980 and May of 1983 – they had their own titles. However, if someone referred to them numerically, they would be first, second, and third (or 1, 2, and 3). Fast forward over two decades from the originally released movie and there were prequels, which (while I am loath to admit they exist) changed the order of things. Fast forward another decade (going on two) and there were (pretty amazing) sequels to the originally released movies. The story continues… and I love that.
I love of stories and storytelling. I think it’s fascinating that we meet each other in the middle of our stories and simultaneously work forwards and back. We don’t always think about it, but the way the Star Wars movies were released is actually how we meet and how most of the stories we read, hear, and watch work too. It’s very rare that we meet characters at the beginning of creation. A story usually begins in the middle or at the end. So, part of what I love about storytelling is how the storyteller (or the story) chooses to unfold the tale. In fact, part of the beauty of the story is watching it unfold.
One of my favorite stories – in part, because the way the story unfolds is part of the story – is the story people tell on Purim. It is the story in and around The Megillah or The Megillat Esther.
In case you are unfamiliar with the holiday and the story, Purim [פּוּרִים] is a Hebrew word meaning “lots” – as in “casting lots” or “lottery.” It is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the story told in the Megillah (“scroll”) of Esther, which is the story of how Queen Esther saved the Jewish people from the evil plot of a man whose actions are good examples of someone who was narcissistic, power hungry, and also anti-Semitic. The “Book of Esther” is not only found in the Hebrew Bible it is also one of the five megillot (“scrolls”) that make up part of the Christian Old Testament. Some people think of it as a great story about the power of a woman – and while it is that, it is also something more; because the story has a lot of “hidden” elements.
The story is quite literally about things that “someone” decided to “hide and hide” [הַסְתֵּ֨ר אַסְתִּ֤יר].
“Another approach, found already in rabbinic literature, takes the absence of God as a positive statement made by the author. The Rabbis, and numerous other readers since, understood the literary absence of God to be merely a surface-level fact, and in fact to be a subtle argument for the hiddenness of God, rather than his absence. A Talmudic comment (in B. Hullin 139b) playfully asks, ‘What is the source for Esther in the Torah?’ The answer given is that Esther was foretold in Deuteronomy 31:18: ‘I will indeed hide (haster astir) my face on that day.’ In part this is a pun, linking the name Esther to the Hebrew phrase ‘I will indeed hide’ (haster astir), but in part it is a serious theological claim: where did the Torah foretell a story with no God?”
– quoted from “8. Diaspora revisions: rethinking Exodus and rethinking God – Entering the fray: Esther as a political book” in Esther in Ancient Jewish Thought by Aaron Koller
People celebrate Purim by dressing up in costume – hiding one’s true identity – and having a party or feast. People may also have a parade and a pageant. The costuming and the party (even the parades and pageants) are all, symbolically, part of the story. To add yet another symbol from the story, the feasting includes hamantaschen, a yummy triangular shaped pastry that I always think of as Haman’s hat, but which literally means “Haman’s pockets.” In some Jewish communities they are referred to as “Haman’s ears.”
The story is symbolically reinforced in many different ways during the celebration of Purim, because the biggest part of the holiday is the story itself. In fact, listening to a public reading of the Book of Esther, in the evening (since the holiday starts at sunset) and in the morning, is one of four mitzvoh (“commandments”) related to Purim. The other three take place during the day and are sending food gifts to friends; giving charity to the poor; and eating a festive meal.
While I don’t read the actual text** to people during the practice, I do tell the story. And for years, I have used the music to help me tell the story – just like I do with all the other stories. Up until this year 2022, however, my Purim playlist was a little… shall we say, problematic. Because there was something hidden in my playlist – and not in a good way.
“This desert rose
Whose shadow bears the secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this
And now she turns
This way she moves in the logic of all my dreams
This fire burns
I realize that nothing’s as it seems”
– quoted from the song “Desert Rose” by Sting
Some of my playlists have always reflected the culture behind the story or theme of the day. For instance, my Saint Patrick’s Day playlist is full of Irish musicians and musicians with Irish heritage, just like my Cinco de Mayo playlist is full of musicians with Mexican heritage. As I’ve previously mentioned on the blog, I’ve very deliberately made some playlists multi-cultural to highlight the fact that so many cultures celebrate things like light overcoming darkness. Then, years ago, a friend’s comment really made me consider why my playlists mostly featured men. Despite all that, I never really considered that there was something off about my Purim playlist.
And, that takes us back to why certain songs were popular, while other also very good songs were not as popular.
“It’s so not an accident that most of the kirtan and ‘yoga music artists’ on our playlists are NOT from within the tradition. (It is called erasure and happens to people of color in our own traditions ALL THE TIME.)”
– quoted from a January 2022 message entitled “What Are You Listening to? On Decolonizing Your Yoga Playlists” by Susanna Barkataki
Susanna Barkataki is a yoga advocate, a teacher, a public speaker, and the author of Embrace Yoga’s Roots: Courageous Ways to Deepen Your Yoga Practice. In her book, her articles, and her classes, she encourages students and teachers to (re)connect to yoga’s ancient roots. She strongly recommends that teachers consider why they do the things they do (and say the things they say) when teaching. She also suggests that teachers take a look at how some of the things we say and do are the result of colonization and cultural erasure. However, she does not simply point to how elements of our modern, Western-centric practice are problematic. She also offers tools and solutions. For instance, she specifically points to music and highlights the fact that those of us using kirtan – which is a form of bhakti or devotional yoga – are almost always using non-traditional musicians. Sometimes, even using musicians that mispronounce the Sanskrit words.
To be clear, Ms. Barkataki uses the words “cultural erasure,” but it’s a concept I’ve always known as whitewashing. And, above and beyond anything else, she encourages us all to be mindful about the choices we make. Being mindful meant that when I was getting ready for Purim this last year, I realized that in most of the ways that counted, my culturally-specific playlist was specifically the wrong culture.
In my effort to pick songs that told the story, I neglected to pick Jewish musicians. Even worse, given the context of the story, my original playlist included several songs with Arabic lyrics and/or Arabic-related references that had nothing to do with Jewish heritage. To be clear about my own hubris, I knew this… I just leaped over the issue. In some ways, my mental gymnastics included the fact that those songs could be about a Jewish woman like Esther. They could very easily have been songs written by people who didn’t know their beautiful “Persian” queen was born Hadassah. Anything is possible.
However, the reality was that they were just popular songs that were also really good, worked with the practice, and could fit the story. They were songs that I knew, because I had heard them on the radio.
“Erasure is when the originators of a particular tradition are surpassed, replaced or ignored. Why? Because it makes it easier to colonize and exploit our cultural and spiritual wisdom and wealth.”
– quoted from a January 2022 message entitled “What Are You Listening to? On Decolonizing Your Yoga Playlists” by Susanna Barkataki
I recently heard a young, up-and-coming artist compare achieving a huge milestone to winning the lottery. For sure, I can see that. Especially when you consider how many people commented on the fact that this artist hit this much deserved milestone before his much lauded collaborator. (Don’t misunderstand me, I’m a big fan of both artists, but there’s something more than talent at play here.) I think having a hit song is also like that. Because while there is a lot of hard work that goes into creating a hit song, there’s also a lot of luck. It’s like that old adage: you can’t win if you don’t play. Of course, most people who play, don’t win – at least not really big – and it’s the same thing with being a big star in music.
The existence of streaming services and social media means that a lot of hustle and marketing on the part of the artist (and their community) can get an artist noticed today, in a way they couldn’t get noticed 20-plus years ago. That attention can really push a song up the charts. However, we’re still in a time time when songs are hits (in part) because they are played on the radio. And for all that hustle, many songs are played on the radio because of the way the musician looks. This is true across genres. This is even more so when it comes to music in and from certain countries and cultures. Being talented and having the “right” size, complexion, ethnicity, and (on a certain level) gender and sexuality, is like hitting the Powerball®.
““The Multi-State Lottery Association encourages all lottery players to be responsible in their amount of play.
For some people gambling can become a problem. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, there are a number of helpful resources listed below.
National Council on Problem Gambling
24 Hour Confidential National Helpline
Call: 1-800-522-4700
Chat: ncpgambling.org/chat
Text: 1-800-522-4700
Association of Problem Gambling Service Administrators”
– quoted from the “Play Responsibly” tab on the Powerball® website
While I’ve been known to play bingo in a church basement (for charity and the chance to win a homemade quilt), I’m not really one to play the lottery. My limited understanding is that there’s a lot of different ways you can win with a Powerball®. However, just like with music and other things that could make you wealthy beyond your dreams, you have to be responsible and avoid the scams. You have to balance the temptation and your desire with reality. The reality, again, being that if you don’t play, you don’t win; but most people don’t win… big.
If you’re talented and have the aforementioned equivalent of the Powerball®, you can do things other people can’t do. You can write songs that make people re-think the world. You can sing songs other people not only wouldn’t think to sing, but might be afraid to sing. You can inspire people to sing your songs… even when they don’t always understand you. To me, Bob Dylan and his eponymous first album are a great example of a musical Powerball®.
Click here to read the remainder of the musical Powerball® notes.
There is no playlist for the Common Ground Meditation practice.
The 2022 playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “Purim 2022”]
*NOTE: Here’s a funny aside (related to the original 2022 post). In 2020, just as we started locking down for the pandemic, I blogged and posted a playlist about stories and music. That would have been Part I, except that it was for March 22nd – which means that if I ever get everything posted in sequential order it would be Part III (after the Purim or Saint Patrick’s Day post and the Bob Dylan post).
**NOTE: Since I don’t actually read the Purim text during the practice, I almost always leave out the part where Haman is begging for his life and the King misreads the situation. In some ways, it is an important part of the cause-and-effect of the narrative – and it definitely brings up another aspect of how our perceptions affect our stories – but it’s comes at the end so I often overlook it.
Here’s something fun that’s on the YouTube playlist, but is not (yet) available on Spotify.
### Are You Lucky or Are You Blessed? ###
Liminal, Lofty, & Rare Days – Redux (the “missing” Friday post) March 6, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in 19-Day Fast, Baha'i, Bhakti, Books, Changing Perspectives, Confessions, Dharma, Faith, First Nations, Healing Stories, Helen Keller, Hope, Lent, Life, Loss, Music, One Hoop, Pain, Philosophy, Religion, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Women, Writing, Yoga.Tags: Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Melville Bell, Anne Sullivan, Bramcharya, Catherine Drexel, Dhyāna, Dhāraṇā, Feast Day of Saint Katharine, Jack Hawley, Jacqueline Kennedy, James H. Platt, James Kubicki, Kanienʼkéha, Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation for World Peace, Mohawk, Orison Swett Marden, Saint Katharine, Samyama, Samādhi, Shannen Dee Williams, Soma Yoga, Somatic Yoga, Susan Moon, Visible Speech, World Hearing Day, yama, Yoga Sutra 2.38
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Many blessings to all, and especially to those observing Lent, Great Lent, the Baháʼí 19-Day Fast, and/or Purim during this “Season for Non-violence” and all other seasons!
This is the “missing” post for the “First Friday Night Special” on March 3rd. It includes an excerpt from 2021 that has been expanded and placed in a different context. You can request an audio recording of this Somatic Yoga Experience (SYE) practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.
Friday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify.
In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)
“We are all made of the ancestors who came before us, those who bore us and those who bore the ones who bore us, all the way back through the generations to Great-Grandmother and Great-Grandfather Amoeba. Some of our ancestors may not have been admirable people, but we came from them, too, whether we like them or not.”
– quoted from “We Will Be Ancestors Too” in Alive Until You’re Dead: Notes on the Home Stretch by Susan Moon
Don’t laugh; but, I was yesterday years old when I realized that each of the “Season for Non-violence” themes provided (online) by the Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation for World Peace actually contains an embedded link that provides practice tips for each day and theme. In my defense, each daily theme is inspired by the work of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. – and, up until March 3rd, I could fairly easily recall speeches, talks, and sermons from each leader that connected to to the theme. Also, what I considered (in my practice) fit the declared objective: “…to create an awareness of nonviolent principles and practice as a powerful way to heal, transform, and empower our lives and communities.” Had I paid more attention to the last part of the statement (“It is, therefore, the purpose of the Season and the following 64 Daily Practices to educate and inspire individuals and organizations alike to actively seek out nonviolent means by which to empower themselves and others to co-exist in peace and prosper together in community.”) I would have gotten more curious about the “educate” aspect; but, alas, I was just cruising along until the March 3rd theme: Acknowledgement.
If you follow the “Acknowledgement” link (which I am including here), you will find quotes, discussion topics, and exercises related to the oneness of life, the sacredness of life, and how our interconnectedness enables us to achieve the things we achieve in life. Acknowledgement here is directly tied to gratitude. In particular, it is tied to gratitude for those whose efforts contribute to our existence and way of moving through the world. This is very much a theme that shows up in the work and words of both Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. King, and it makes sense that contemplation along these lines “elevates our awareness of nonviolence.” Additionally, I think it is important to recognize and acknowledge when someone has the best intentions and yet causes harm. I think, too, that it is important to acknowledge how someone can make great contributions to the world – contributions that benefit most of our lives – and, yet, they can be not so great people (and/or have really horrendous ideas).
If you wonder how such contemplation can also meet the season’s objectives and elevate our awareness of nonviolence, consider that (a) we all make mistakes; (b) individually and collectively, we are all better off when we can learn from past mistakes (and other people’s mistakes); and (c) healing and empowerment can begin/continue with an acknowledgement that people (individually and collectively) were wronged.
Please keep all that in mind as you soak up the following; because, March 3rd is a day when I sometimes reference people who are venerated (socially and, in one case, religiously) even though their actions caused harm.
“‘The ideal, Arjuna, is to be intensely active and at the same time have no selfish motives, no thoughts of personal gain or loss. duty uncontaminated by desire leads to inner peacefulness and increased effectiveness. This is the secret art of living a life of real achievement!’”
– Krishna speaking to Arjuna (2.47 excerpt and 2.48) in The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners by Jack Hawley
When we are going about our every day, busy, mundane/profane lives, we may find ourselves measuring success in very different ways than we do when we step into the sacred and mystical. Stepping into the sacred for a week or two, or several months, requires changing the business (and the busy-ness) of our days and, also, changing the focus of our days – which is exactly what people are currently doing as they observe the Lenten season and/or the Baháʼí 19-Day Fast. During these times, some may look at success as successfully giving something up or doing something positive for a predetermined period of time. That kind of success, however, is still rooted in the physical. Spiritual success, on the internal level, is not measured in the same way. Remember, people in different traditions are spending this time (i.e., these “liminal days”) focused on a higher, deeper, more resilient (i.e., “lofty”) and lasting connection with the Divine (whatever that means to you at this moment). So, if their success could be measured, it would be measured by that deeply personal and sacred relationship. I emphasized “if” and “could,” because what I am suggesting is similar to what happens when we look at the practice of Brahmacharya.
Brahmacharya is the fourth yama (external “restraint” or universal “commandment”) in the Yoga Philosophy. The first part of the word refers to one of the name’s of God and also to an individual’s highest Self. The second part of the word can be translated into English in several ways, including as “occupation with, engaging, proceeding, behavior, conduct, to follow, moving in, going after.” It was first explained to me as conducting oneself as if you are “chasing God” or “following in the footsteps of God.” In Yoga Sūtra 2.38, Patanjali explained that it is a practice through which one gains “vigor and vitality.”
So, what is the practice, you ask?
There is an actually practice, which is different in different traditions; however, most people (in the West) talk about the practice of the concept of brahmacharya, based on the way Yoga Sūtra 2.38 is translated. Some English translations use the words “continence” or “abstention from incontinence” – both of which are related to passions/desires and bodily functions (like elimination). Some English translations, however, just focus on celibacy (and refraining from sexual relations on a physical, mental, and verbal level). These are all things that can, mostly, be seen and measured on the outside. They are, on some level, identifiable and obvious. I would argue, however, that this most obvious part of the practice misses the fact that brahmacharya is an internal practice. Like the other yamas, it just shows up in external ways.
But, just because we can easily see how something like sex can be distracting and how it can pull our focus, does not mean that we don’t go deeper. Since we often measure profane success financially, one way to go deeper is to look at the life of someone who had a lot of money and yet successfully devoted their life to the sacred.
“‘To work without desire may seem impossible, but the way to do it is to substitute thoughts of Divinity for thoughts of desire. Do your work in this world with your heart fixed on the Divine instead of on outcomes. Do not worry about results. Be even tempered in success or failure. This mental evenness is what is mean by yoga…. Indeed, equanimity is yoga!’”
– Krishna speaking to Arjuna (2.47 excerpt and 2.48) in The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners by Jack Hawley
Full disclosure: I do not detail egregious behavior and/or opinions; however, the remainder of this post does include passing references to eugenics, racism, and cultural genocide.
In the past, I have compared the path of Saint David to the path of Saint Katharine (Drexel), whose feast day is March 3rd. Born Catherine Mary Drexel on November 26, 1858, Saint Katharine was a Philadelphia-born heiress who, along with her two sisters, inherited several millions when her father and step-mother died. That’s several million USD, even after the $1.5 million USD that was subtracted for charitable donations stipulated in their father’s will. The will also ensured that the sisters maintained control of their own finances.
In many ways, the Drexel sisters (Elizabeth, Catherine, and Louise) were American royalty. Their grandfather, Francis Martin Drexel, was an Austrian-born banker, whose American-born sons followed in his footsteps. Francis Anthony Drexel, the girls’ father, was a wealthy banker whose younger brothers were Anthony Joseph Drexel Sr. and and Joseph William Drexel. Anthony Joseph Drexel Sr. was one of the senior partners of Drexel, Morgan & Company (now J.P. Morgan & Co.); the founder of Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry (now Drexel University); and was deeply committed to integrating art and urban planning. Joseph William Drexel worked as a banker at Drexel, Morgan & Company until he decided to give up the business world in order to focus on collecting books and art and other philanthropic endeavors. Elizabeth and Catherine’s mother, Hannah Langstroth Drexel, died several weeks after Catherine was born and, in 1860, their father married Emma Bouvier – the great, great aunt of Jacqueline (née Bouvier) Kennedy Onassis.
The girls grew up with luxury, privilege, and a devout Roman Catholicism that emphasized good works. Their father, Francis Anthony Drexel, prayed 30-minutes a day. When their mother died, the eldest girls spent some time living with their uncle Joseph, who owned a farm where he provided room and board and agricultural training for people who were out of work. When Francis married Emma, the girls returned home and saw how their father supported and encouraged Emma to open their home in order to provide food, clothing, and medicine to the less fortunate. At some point they would have also been aware that Francis and Emma regularly paid the rents of approximately 150 other families – and they would have learned the importance of doing what one could and looking out for others in the world.
“At her canonization in 2000, Saint John Paul II said, ‘From her parents [Blessed Katharine Drexel] learned that her family’s possessions were not for them alone but were meant to be shared with the less fortunate. She began to devote her fortune to missionary and educational work among the poorest members of society. Later, she understood that more was needed. With great courage and confidence in God’s grace, she chose to give not just her fortune but her whole life totally to the Lord.’”
– quoted from “March 3” in 2016 edition of A Year of Daily Offerings by James Kubicki S. J.
In 1887, several years after their parents died and they became multi-millionaires, the sisters received a private audience with Pope Leo XIII. Katharine wanted to know why the pope wasn’t doing more to alleviate the suffering of Indigenous Americans. The pope suggested that Katharine become a missionary and undertake the task. Ultimately, she decided to take on the suggestion. She took holy vows in 1891. Then, joined by 13 other women, she founded Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People (now known as Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament [SBS]), a religious congregation for women that specifically served Indigenous and African American people. She dedicated her time, energy, and considerable resources to the Church, financing over 60 missions and schools around the United States, including founding Xavier University of Louisiana – the only historically Black and Catholic university in the United States.
Of course, the unfortunate and tragic part of this story is that the students at the Indian schools were (more often than not) stolen from their homes and families, in order to make them less-Indian – something Pope Francis has recently acknowledged and apologized for on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church (at least in Canada). Also documented, though less publicized, has been cases of racism experienced by African American students (who were often treated as an afterthought) and African American nuns who took vows through SBS.
Of course, none of this injury to marginalized communities was seriously considered when Katharine died on March 3, 1955. I’m not even sure how much it would be considered if she died today; because, her life’s work would be (and was) measured by the perceived good that she did for the Church and in God’s name. It was those metrics (and a series of miracles) that led the way for her to eventually become the second U S. citizen to be canonized, and the first Roman Catholic saint actually born a United States citizen.
“African American Catholics who supported Drexel’s sainthood were seemingly unaware of the order’s 1893 segregationist vote and SBS leaders seemingly did not inform them….. Finally, knowledge of SBS’s segregationist practices may not have disqualified Drexel for sainthood. White female congregational leaders Elizabeth Seton and Rose Philippine Duchesne, who exploited enslaved labor and practiced segregation, were canonized in 1975 and 1988 respectively. Cornelia Connelly, another enslaver and the US-born foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Child of Jesus (SHCJ), was declared venerable in 1992.”
– quoted from the note “72” of “Notes to Introduction” in Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle by Shannen Dee Williams
Katharine Drexel is considered the patron saint of philanthropy and (ironically) of racial justice; however, the miracles that led to her beatification and canonization are not related to the racial justice. They are related to the senses. She was beatified in 1988, after the Vatican concluded that her intercession resulted in a boy (Robert Gutherman of Bensalem, PA) being cured of deafness in 1974. She was canonized in 2000 after the Vatican announced that a young girl (Amy Wall of Bucks County, PA) had been cured of her deafness after her 7-year old brother (Jack, who believed in miracles) insisted that the family prayer to “Mother Drexel.” Her feast day (which is the anniversary of her death) is also the anniversary of the he birth of Alexander Graham Bell (b. 1847), whose interest in hearing and speech and all things acoustic stemmed from his mother’s deafness and his father’s work in linguistics.
Like Katharine Drexel, Alexander Bell (the “Graham” was added when he was ten years old) was a middle child whose early life was touched by death and loss. His mother, Eliza Grace Bell (née Symonds), started losing her hearing when he was around twelve years old and his brothers (Melville James Bell and Edward Charles Bell) died of tuberculosis when he was in his early twenties. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, followed in the footsteps of his father (Alexander Bell) and older brother (David Charles Bell) and became a phonetician and elocutionist. Young Aleck’s father, specialized in speech disorders and developed “Visible Speech” – a system of symbols specifically designed to teach deaf people how to position and move their throat, tongue, and lips in order to speak – and wrote books about how to teach deaf people to speak and to read lips. Alexander Melville Bell was also his sons’ first teacher and, so, the three Bell brothers learned all the tricks of the linguistics trade.
“The question arose, ‘“How are you going to describe a constriction?”’ It was observed that the principal organs concerned with speech group themselves into two classes, namely, active and passive. Generally, the lower organs fall in the active group and the upper ones fall in the passive group. For instance: ‘“In forming the sound (t), the point of the tongue is the active agent involved, and the upper gum is the passive.”’ It must also be understood that in this case the two organs under discussion approximate together so as to completely close the intervening passageway.”
– quoted from the Journal of Speech Disorders (1947, 12, 377-380) article entitled “The Method of Alexander Graham Bell and A. Melville Bell for Studying the Mechanism of Speech” by James H. Platt
Alexander Graham Bell had a special affinity for music and art, as well as a special talent when it came to language, elocution, mimicry, and even a form of ventriloquism. He learned different ways to communicate with his mother, including using a version of Sign Language, and was so adept at “Visible Speech” and his father’s principles of elocution that Alexander Melville Bell used Aleck during public demonstrations, to show how they techniques could be used with a variety of languages. All of this led Aleck to study elocution and acoustics at the university-level. It also led him to experiment with sound-producing mechanisms and, when he was a teenager, he and his brother Melville even created a machine that could “talk” – inspired him to experiment with ways to make his dog speak English.
Aleck was pursuing a career as an elocution teacher, specifically working with deaf students, when his brothers died and his parents thought it would be best if the remaining family relocated to North America. In Canada, he continued working with elocution, experimenting with electricity and mechanical devices, and eventually used “Visible Speech” to create a written version of Mohawk (Kanienʼkéha, “[language] of the Flint Place”). In 1871, he started working with deaf schools in New England (training teachers to use his father’s “Visible Speech System”) and continued working on a device that would be able to transmit and receive sound. A little over a year later, in October 1872, he opened the “School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech” where he worked directly with deaf students. During this time, he was also working as a professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at the Boston University School of Oratory and continuing his experiments.
When his workload started to affect his health, he gave up all but two of his private students: six-year old George “Georgie” Sanders (who was born deaf) and 15-year old Mabel Hubbard (who lost her hearing after contracting scarlet fever). He was particular inspired by Mabel, who he would marry in 1877. Another student whose life he would greatly inspire was Helen Keller, who lost both her hearing and sight after experiencing a severe illness as a baby. He recommended that Arthur Henley Keller and Catherine Everett (née Adams) Keller contact the Perkins Institution to find a teacher for young Helen. The recommended teacher was Anne Sullivan (the “Miracle Worker”), who started working with the young girl, Helen Keller, in March of 1887.
“Doubtless the work of the past few months does seem like a triumphal march to him; but then people seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.”
– quoted from a letter written by Anne Sullivan, dated October 30, 1887
Thomas Sanders and Gardiner Greene Hubbard (the fathers of “Georgie” and Mabel) became A. G. Bell’s benefactors, providing him with financial support and a place to conduct his experiments. That support enabled Alexander Graham Bell to apply for patents; hire Thomas A. Watson, an electrical designer and mechanic, as his assistant; and organize what would become the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (established in 1877). Mr. Bell and Mr. Watson successfully transmitted sound in June 1875 and, on March 10, 1876, successfully made a “telephone” call. Over the next few months, they extended the range for one-way calls and then were able to make two-way calls. Ten years later, over 150,000 people in the United States owned landlines and the inventors were continuously improving on their device and on the infrastructure needed to make them work.
Again, however, there was/is controversy – and some of it is quite unfortunate, tragic even. First, there is the controversy around the patents and the device that ended up working. Many people said (and say) that Elisha Gray should be credited as the inventor of the telephone (because of a discrepancy in the patent process and the fact that A. G. Bell’s success required the use of Mr. Gray’s liquid transmitter). Then there is the controversy surrounding Alexander Graham Bell’s opinions of people with disabilities – and this part is a controversy wrapped in a controversy.
Alexander Graham Bell believed in deaf people and people with impaired hearing (essentially) masking their deafness by learning to speak and read lips. This is an undisputed fact – meaning, his belief in this idea is undisputed. Neither is it disputed that he wrote about and participated in eugenics studies that advocated for people’s civil rights and liberties to be diminished. Nor is it disputed that some of his peers and students, like Helen Keller, supported eugenic philosophies. What is disputed is whether or not he actually believed the nonsense. He made a point of stating and writing, on more than one occasion, that he did not believe deaf people should be limited in who the could marry. When asked if the thought “‘environment and heredity count in success,’” he said, “‘Environment, certainly; heredity, not so distinctly.’” But, people saw the next part of his statement as open to interpretation. Similarly, he made a point of distancing himself from certain organizations; however, his actions did not stop said organizations from using his name and his words to support their very damaging theories and world views.
Both Saint Katharine Drexel and Alexander Graham Bell wanted to help people that, on a certain level, they saw as less fortunate than them – and that’s commendable. The fact that they were “successful,” according to certain parameters, makes their stories inspirational. However, their good intentions and good work also caused harm; possibly because they didn’t just think they were helping people that were less fortunate than them. It is possible that they believed they were successfully helping people who were “less than” them – and that is a mindset that is always problematic and always leads to suffering.
While I say all of this, I don’t want to discount the fact that people continue to be inspired by both Saint Katharine and Alexander Graham Bell. March 3rd was even designated by the World Health Organization (WHO) as World Hearing Day.* (Although I can find no reference to A. G. Bell in WHO materials, it seems a little too coincidental to not be related.) People are inspired for a lot of different reasons; but, one of those reasons is that both were famously focused – and our ability to focus was the main point of Friday’s practice.
“Peacefully do at each moment what at that moment ought to be done. If we do what each moment requires, we will eventually complete God’s plan, whatever it is. We can trust God to take care of the master plan when we take care of the details.”
– St. Katharine Drexel (d. 03/03/1955)
Doing what ought to be done, requires focusing on the moment and the task at hand. To varying degrees and for varying lengths of time, we all have the ability to focus. Sometimes we do it intentionally; sometimes our mind is just drawn in a certain direction. Either way, focus leads to concentration; concentration leads to meditation – maybe, even, that perfect meditation, which can be considered “Union with Divine” (whatever that means to you at this moment). These are the last three limbs in the Yoga Philosophy: Dhāraṇā, Dhyāna, and Samādhi. (which can also be translated as concentration, meditation, and absorption). They combine to form the powerful tool of Samyama, which leads to powerful insight, the highest wisdom, and more siddhis (“powers”) than one can imagine. However, before we can focus/concentrate on a single thing, we have to draw all of our senses towards that single point. In other words, we have to withdraw our senses from everything else – this is Pratyāhāra, the fifth limb of the 8-Limbed Yoga Philosophy.
“‘Next must come concentration of purpose and study. That is another thing I mean to emphasize. Concentrate all your thought upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.’”
– quoted in the section entitled “Concentration of Purpose” in “Chapter II – Bell Telephone Talk: Hints on Success by Alexander G. Bell” in How They succeeded: Life Stories of Successful Men Told by Themselves by Orison Swett Marden
*NOTE: The 2023 World Hearing Day theme is “Ear and hearing care for all! Let’s make it a reality.”
“‘I repeat, Arjuna, nobody can really become one with the Godhead without leaving their desires behind and abandoning their attachment to the fruits of their actions. The paths of desireless action (karma yoga) and renunciation (sanyasa) may seem to be different from one another but they are not. All spiritual growth is based on surrendering attachments and selfish motives.’” (6.2)
– Krishna speaking to Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners by Jack Hawley
### PICK YOUR FOCUS WISELY ###
Leadership & Kriya Yoga (the “missing” Monday post) February 21, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in Baha'i, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Faith, Food, Gandhi, Healing Stories, Hope, Karma, Lent, Life, Mysticism, One Hoop, Passover, Philosophy, Ramadan, Religion, Wisdom, Yoga, Yom Kippur.Tags: Avishai Cohen, Clean Monday, Daisy Bates, Jack Hawley, kriya yoga, kriyā yoga, Lundi Gras, Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, President's Day, Presidents' Day, Sadhguru, Season for Nonviolence, Season of Non-violence, Shrove Monday, Shrovetide, The Second Book of Chronicles, Washington's Birthday
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Many blessings to to anyone preparing for Lent. Peace and ease to all during this “Season for Non-violence” and all other seasons!
This is the “missing” post for Monday, February 20th. Some elements of this post appeared in a different context, which you can click here to review. You can request a recording of either practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.
In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)
Check the “Class Schedules” calendar for upcoming practices.
“There comes a time when we should be together
United in our fight to make things better.
Our world is here,
But will not be forever,
Depending on our will to change [the] matter.”
“This is a song of hope.”
– quoted the song “Song of Hope” by Avishai Cohen
During the Season for Non-violence (January 30th – April 4th), the Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation for World Peace offers daily themes or elements for contemplation, which are derived from the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the theme for February 20th is “mission.” We can think of a mission the way some people think of a goal or desire, we can think of it as a calling – or, in the sense of the Yoga Philosophy, we can think of it as sva-dharma (“one’s personal duty in life”), which can also be called one’s personal law). No matter how we view it, the Bhagavad Gita indicates that we all have such a role – which means we all have a mission.
The Bhagavad Gita is set during a lull in battle during a great civil war. Arjuna is a prince and military leader on one side of the battle. As others magically look on, he stands in the middle of the battlefield and has a crisis of faith. He looks at his family and friends on both sides of the battlefield and he “loses his resolve.” He questions why he is fighting and what will be resolved. He shares with his best friend and charioteer that he is filled with an amalgamation of emotions, including the possibility of shame and unhappiness if he were to kill his own friends and family. As Arjuna shares his deepest worries and fears, his friend and charioteer (Krishna) reveals himself as an avatar of God and then emphasizes the importance of doing what’s right even when it (and everything else) seems wrong.
Krishna outlines several different methods by which one can live a “truth-based life” and experience ultimate fulfilment (which, spoiler alert, has nothing to do with the spoils of battle). He is very clear that there are different methods or paths for different people and (sometimes) for different situations, but that all paths ultimately lead to the Divine and to self-realization. One of the big takeaways from his explanation is that everyone has a role to play in society.
“‘Your very nature dictates that you perform the duties attuned to your disposition. Those duties are your dharma, your natural calling. It is far better to do your own dharma, even if you do it imperfectly, than to try to master the work of another. Those who perform the duties called for by their obligations, even if those duties seem of little merit, are able to do them with less effort – and this releases consciousness that can be directed Godward.”
– Krishna speaking to Arjuna (18.47) in The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners by Jack Hawley
As Krishna explains in Chapter 18 people’s different personalities play a part in determining their different roles and duties. In very general (but explicit) terms, he describes “Seers, Leaders, Providers, and Servers.” He also emphasizes that “No particular group of people is superior to any other, but like limbs of the body, each has a respective role to play.” (BG 18.41) The descriptions are clear enough that we can easily identify ourselves and also recognize that there are times when we are called to serve more than one role.
For example, a professional teacher could be described as a seer and/or a leader. But, even if someone is not a professional teacher, the way they live their life sets an example. The way any of us lives our lives teaches others – especially younger generations – how to love, how to care for each other, how to stand up for what’s right, and how to do the right thing… even when it is hard. In this way, we are all leaders.
“‘Consider them one by one. Society’s Seers are the holy ones (in some societies referred to as Brahmins). Seers are expected to establish the character and spiritual underpinnings of society. Their duties are generally of pure, unmixed sattva and are therefore congenial to a person of sattvic nature. This is what is meant by the term “born of their own nature.” Providing spiritual and moral leadership is generally “natural” to Seers.
‘Seers must have spiritual knowledge and wisdom – knowledge of God-realization obtained through devout study – and wisdom beyond knowledge, acquired through direct experience of the Atma. Seers must have purity of heart, mind, and body; and allow no perversity or corruption to creep in. They must possess serenity, calmness, forbearance, forgiveness, and patience – and hold to an unwavering faith in the divinity of all life. The primary purpose of the Seers is to help transform society’s exemplary human beings into godly beings.
‘The primary objective of society’s Leaders is to help transform ordinary human beings into exemplary human beings. The Leaders (referred to as Kshatriyas) are expected to guard the welfare and prosperity of society by serving the people. They are charged with bringing moral stamina and adherence to duty through courage, fearlessness, resourcefulness, and ingenuity in the face of changing conditions. They must be examples of law, justice, and generosity. They must lead by inspiring the populace through good example and yet be ready to enforce their authority.
‘Both groups are strong in their own ways. The strength of the Leaders lies in their courage; the strength of the Seers lies in their spiritual glow.’”
– Krishna speaking to Arjuna (18.42 – 18.43) in The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners by Jack Hawley
In the United States, the third Monday in February is a federal holiday intended to honor the country’s highest leader, the president. Officially designated by the federal government as “Washington’s Birthday,” it was named to honor George Washington (born Feb 22, 1732), who served as a general during the American Revolution and was the newly-formed country’s first president. It is also known, federally (but not officially), as “Presidents’ Day,” to honor all U. S. presidents. Some states call it “President’s Day” (singular) or some combination of “Washington and Lincoln’s Day” (since Abraham Lincoln played a prominent role in shaping the United States and also had a February birthday). In Alabama this Monday is called “George Washington/Thomas Jefferson Birthday” (even though the latter of whom was born April 12, 1743) and in Arkansas it is “George Washington’s Birthday and Daisy Bates Day” (the latter of whom was not a president; but, rather a Civil Rights activist, born in Arkansas on November 11, 1914). Many states also have other president-related celebrations at throughout the year; however, Delaware does not observe a Presidents Day at all, while New Mexico, Georgia, and Indiana have celebrations around Thanksgiving or Christmas.
In some ways, this holiday has fallen into the same trap as other federal holidays: it’s become a paid day off for federal employees, a three-day weekend, and a weekend for sales. That’s it. However, it can still be a day to reflect on what it takes to be a great leader and, maybe, even a great leader who is also a great seer. It could also be a great day to consider what kind of effort it would take for a great leader to be a wonderful human being – if that’s even a thing in our modern society.
“The literal meaning kriya is “verb.” Every verb is representative of a distinct process or function and no process of function reaches fruition without a doer.”
– quoted from the commentary on Yoga Sūtra 2.1 from The Practice of the Yoga Sūtra: Sadhana Pada by Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, PhD
Over the last couple of days, I have mentioned a suggestion Sadhguru offered people celebrating Maha Shivaratri. The founder of the Isha Foundation suggested that people write down three things that would make them a wonderful human being and then to put those three things into action. Of course, action is a big deal in the Indian philosophies and their corresponding sacred texts.
There are two Sanskrit words that can be translated into English as “work” or “effort,” and which both apply to our thoughts, words, and deeds/actions. The first word is kriyā and the second word is karma. Most English speakers are familiar with the word karma (or kamma in Pali). Even if they are not 100% certain about the meaning, they understand the general concept of cause-and-effect. What they may miss is that karma is the effect or consequence, while kriyā is the cause. Kriyā is an ongoing process and also the steps within the process; it is active. You could also think of karma as fate and kriyā as destiny; where the former is unchangeable and the latter is the journey to your destination.
Another perspective is to think about karma as an intention. Classically, when we talk about karma, we talk about planting seeds and things coming into fruition. So, one way to think of it is that we plant seeds that already have within them the image of the final product and kriyā is what we do to nurture and harvest what’s been planted – and/or what we do when we need to uproot the poisonous weeds.
Some traditions specifically use kriyā in relation to internal action or work and speak of karma when referring to external work. In some ways, this dovetails with Yoga Sūtra 2.1, which defines kriyā yoga (“union in action”) as a combination of the final three niyamas (internal “observations”): discipline/austerity, self-study, and trustful surrender to a higher power (other than one’s self). In this context, kriyā yoga* is a purification ritual. It is an opportunity to let go of what no longer serves us and move with more strength, focus, and determination.
Of course, we all have different rituals and traditions.
Just as we all may describe the attributes of a leader, a seer, and/or a wonderful human being in different ways, the work needed to reach that potential is going to be different for everyone. However, the basic structure of Patanjaliʼs kriyā yoga remains the same and there are several religious and philosophical observations that can fit within this rubric, including Yom Kippur and Passover, the Baháʼí 19-Day Fast, and the holy month of Ramaḍān. Lent, for which people are currently preparing, can also be considered a form of kriyā yoga.
“Give me wisdom and knowledge, that I may lead this people….”
– quoted from King Solomon’s request in The Second Book of the Chronicles 1:10 (NIV)
In the Western Christian tradition, the Monday before Lent may be known as Shrove Monday by people already focusing on “shriving.” Shrovetide, which includes the three weeks before Lent, is a period of self-examination, repentance, and amendments of sins. Similarly, in Eastern Orthodox traditions, which use a different calendar, the Monday before Lent is next week and is sometimes referred to as Clean Monday.
On the flipside, some people will spend this same period of time – anything from three weeks to two or three days – focusing on indulging in the things they are planning to give up during Lent. For instance, the Monday before Lent is also the last Monday of Carnival. In places like New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Coast, it is also known as Lundi Gras (“Fat Monday”). Rose Monday, Merry Monday, and Hall Monday are also names associated with pre-Lenten festivities around the world. In parts of the United Kingdom, people may refer to this day as Collap Monday, because their traditional breakfast will include collaps (leftover slabs of meat, like bacon) and eggs. In east Cornwall, however, people traditionally eat pea soup and, therefore, call today Peasen (or Paisen) Monday.
Just like with the aforementioned federal holiday in the United States, each name reflects what people value and, more importantly, each name reflects the different actions people are taking in order to fulfill their mission or serve the purpose in life.
“‘Wherever Divinity and humanity are found together – with humanity armed and ready to fight wickedness – there also will be found victory in the battle of life, a life expanded to Divinity and crowned with prosperity and success, a life of adherence to dharma, in tune with the Cosmic Plan. I am convinced of this.ʼ”
– Sanjaya, the minister, speaking to “the blind old King, Dhritarashtra”(18.78) in The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners by Jack Hawley
There is no music for the Common Ground Meditation Center practice.
*NOTE: In the Kundalini Yoga tradition, “kriyā” is the term applied to sequences with specific energetic intentions.
### Do The Work (with Grace). ###
The Fire We Desire & The Fire(s) We Need (a Tuesday post & a special Black History note) February 14, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Books, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Faith, Gratitude, Healing Stories, Hope, Life, Loss, Love, Music, Mysticism, One Hoop, Pain, Philosophy, Poetry, Religion, Science, Suffering, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tragedy, Wisdom, Writing, Yin Yoga, Yoga.Tags: A. S. Klein, Anna Murray Douglass, Ayurveda, Black History Month, CBS Sunday Morning, David Hogg, Declaration of Sentiments, Frederick Douglass, Geoffrey Chaucer, George L. Ruffin, Helen Piitts Douglass, Jamie Woon, kabbalah, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, Martin Luther King Jr, Oscar Wilde, Parkland, Peter Cook, Rita Braver, Robert Pirsig, Saint Valentine, Seneca Falls Convention, shabda, siddhis, Underground Railroad, Webster's 1828, William Goldman
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!
This is the post for Tuesday, February 14th and (technically) the 14th special Black History note. Today’s word is gratitude and I am grateful for you. Some parts of the following were originally posted in 2021 and 2022. Some context, class details, and links have been added or updated. My apologies for not posting before the Noon class.
In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, recordings, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)
“And, [L]ove – True [L]ove – will follow you forever.”
– “The Impressive Clergyman” (Peter Cook) in the movie The Princess Bride by William Goldman
No one can be surprised that “words” are one of my favorite supernormal powers. In fact, śabda (or shabda), ranks as one of my top six siddhis or “powers.” Yet, there’s also no denying that words are not only one of our super powers, they are also a form of kryptonite – especially when we’re dealing with English. The English language seems to have as many rules as exceptions and as many homonyms that are homographs as homophones. And if the homonyms that sound the same but have different meanings and/or spellings (homophones) and the homonyms that are spelled the same but have different meanings and/or pronunciation (homographs) aren’t confusing enough, there are words that just have different meanings to different people – or different meanings based on the context. The word “love” is a prime example of a word that can mean different things to different people and at different times.
If you mention love on February 14th, a lot of people in the West will automatically think of “romantic love” – which is kind of ironic since Valentine’s Day started as a Catholic saint’s feast day and that saint may or may not have had anything to do with romantic love. Neither does romantic love have anything to do with the fact that the African American abolitionist, writer, and statesman Frederick Douglass celebrated his birthday on this date is – although, his reasons for doing so are, loosely, connected to it being Saint Valentine’s Day.
“The Greek language comes out with another word for love. It is the word agape, and agape is more than eros. Agape is more than philia. Agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them. You look at every man, and you love him because you know God loves him. And he might be the worst person you’ve ever seen.”
– quoted from “Loving Your Enemies” sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (11/17/1957)
In the song “Gravity,” Jamie Woon sings of loving “a girl who loves synchronicity” and who “confided that love, it is an energy.” We humans (in general) have a tendency to block and/or limit that energy instead of “passing it on,” as the girl in the song does. And, we often use words to limit that energy. Some languages have different words for different kinds of love. Ancient Greek, for example, has érōs for sensual or passionate “love” or “desire;” storgḗ instinctual “love,” “affection,” or familial love (which can also extend to friends and pets); philía, which can be translated as “friendship” or brotherly love and was considered by some to be the “highest form of love;” and agápē, which is also described as unconditional love and “the highest form of love.”
Early Christians co-opted the Greek agápē and added to it their own understanding of the Hebrew chesed, which is sometimes translated into modern English as loving-kindness and stems from the root word (chasad) meaning “eager and ardent desire;” and includes a sense of “zeal” (especially as related to God). However, even in the Hebrew Bible (and the Christian Old Testament), chesed has been translated (in different places) as “mercy,” “kindness,” “lovingkindness,” “goodness,” “kindly” “merciful,” “favour,” “good,” “goodliness,” “pity,” and even “steadfast love.” There’s also a couple of places where it is used with a negative connotation. Judaism (and, particularly Jewish mysticism) also have words like devekut (which might be described as an emotional state and/or an action that cultivates a state related to “cleaving” or clinging to the Divine). Additionally, there is an understanding of a fear/awe of God (that also migrated into Christianity).
In English, we have a tendency to just use the same word for multiple things. Sometimes we add qualifiers like “brotherly” or “romantic;” but, sometimes we just use “love” – which, again, comes with different meanings and associations. During a Monday night in 2022, when I asked people for a word or phrase that they associate with love, I got some really phenomenal answers: acceptance and compassion, bravery (specifically as it relates to social change), trust, all the people that [one] cares about, and giving. To this list, I added earnest.
The “Valentine’s Day” portion of the following is partially excerpted from a 2021 post about “Being Red,” which includes a story about red and the Lunar New Year, as well as how this all ties into the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the upcoming Lenten observations.
“EARNEST, adjective
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Ardent in the pursuit of an object; eager to obtain; having a longing desire; warmly engaged or incited.
They are never more earnest to disturb us, than when they see us most earnest in this duty.
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Ardent; warm; eager; zealous; animated; importunate; as earnest in love; earnest in prayer.
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Intent; fixed.
On that prospect strange
Their earnest eyes were fixed.
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Serious; important; that is, really intent or engaged; whence the phrase, in earnest To be in earnest is to be really urging or stretching towards an object; intent on a pursuit. Hence, from fixed attention, comes the sense of seriousness in the pursuit, as opposed to trifling or jest. Are you in earnest or in jest?”
– quoted from Webster’s Dictionary 1828: American Dictionary of the English Language
Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People premiered on February 14, 1895, at the Saint James Theatre in London. It is a love story (or love stories) of sorts, but it is also a comedy of errors and a social satire full of love, love triangles, double entendres, double lives, mistaken identities, the dichotomy of public versus private life in Victorian society, and so many trivialities that one can hardly be blamed for questioning that about which one should be serious… or earnest. Like his other plays, Earnest was well received and marked a professional high point in Wilde’s life. However, it also marked a personal low point: Wilde’s trial, conviction, and imprisonment for homosexuality – which was illegal in Victorian England. Earnest would be the last play written by Oscar Wilde and, some would argue, his most popular.
While English speakers around the world might not come up with the same definition of “earnest” that was known in Victorian England, I would expect there would be some consensus around it meaning “serious” and “true.” On the flip side, the color red means something different to everyone. Webster’s 1828 dictionary clearly defines it as “a simple or primary color, but of several different shades or hues, as scarlet, crimson, vermilion, orange red etc.” – but even that doesn’t begin to address the fact that, on any given Sunday, the color signifies different things to different people all over the world. I say, “on any given Sunday,” but just consider Sunday the 14th in 2021 [see link above], when red was associated with Valentine’s Day, The Lunar New Year celebrations (in some countries), and even the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Many people associate Valentine’s Day with red hearts, cards, chocolates, flowers, romantic dates, and romantic love – a very commercial endeavor – but it didn’t start out that way. The day actually started as (and to some still is) the Feast Day of Saint Valentine, according to the Western Christian tradition. There are actually two Christian martyrs remembered as Saint Valentine, but the most well-known is the 3rd-century Roman saint (who is honored on July 6th and 30th in the Eastern Christian tradition). According to the legends, Valentine was imprisoned for practicing Christianity during a time when Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire. Before and during his incarceration, Saint Valentine had several conversations with the Roman Emperor Claudius II. Throughout these discussions, the emperor tried to convert the priest to the Roman pagan religion (ostensibly to save the priest’s life) and the priest tried to convert the emperor to Catholicism (theoretically to save the emperor’s soul, and the souls of all that followed him and his decrees).
Around this same time, Valentine had multiple interactions and conversations with the daughter of his jailer. Julia, the daughter, was blind and one of the last acts Valentine reportedly committed (before he was executed) was to heal Julia’s sight. After he was martyred (around 269 A. D.), Julia and her household converted to Catholicism in honor of Valentine. His feast day was established in 496 A.D.; however, around the 18th century, many additional details of the story started cropping up. One such detail was that Valentine married Christian soldiers who had been forbidden to marry (possibly because it would divide their focus and loyalty). Another detail was that he left Julia a letter and signed it “Your Valentine.”
“For this was on Seynt Velentynes day,
Whan every foul cometh ther to chese his make,”
“For this was on Saint Valentine’s day,
When every fowl comes there his mate to take,”
– quoted from the poem “The Parliament of Fowls” by Geoffrey Chaucer, translation by A. S. Klein
As to why red became associated with Valentine’s Day, there are lots of theories and they all come back to those embellishments which focused on Saint Valentine as the patron saint of lovers. Some of those embellishments are attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer’s works about love – and love was associated with the heart, which people associated with red. Additionally, a red stain is traditionally viewed in the Western world as the sign that a woman came to her marital bed as a virgin – a view that is not scientifically factual. Still, the idea persists and there’s some very suggestive, subliminal messaging going on there.
But, let’s go back to the idea of the heart being red. Yoga and Ayurveda, as they come to us from India, use green to symbolize the heart chakra (i.e., the energetic or spiritual heart), but of course, these systems also recognize that the physical heart is red when exposed to the air – or it’s being depicted by an artist, which is why the Sacred Heart of Jesus is depicted as red.
Speaking of the energetic or spiritual heart: Swami Rama of the Himalayan tradition taught that we all have three hearts: a physical heart, which for most of us is on the left; an emotional heart, which for most of us is on the left; and that energetic or spiritual heart of the middle. That “heart center” includes the arms (also fingers and hands) and connects the hearts within us and also connects our hearts with all the hearts around us. Chinese Medicine and their sister sciences of movement, including Yin Yoga, also map the vital energy of the heart through the arms.
Going back to Jewish mysticism: In the Kabbalah, the sefira (or Divine “attribute”) of chesed is related to the right arm. It is balanced by gevurah (“strength”), which is the left arm, and tiferet (“balance”), which is the upper torso and includes the physical heart. These energetic paradigms really reinforce Robert Pirsig’s statement that “The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”
“Indeed, some have called me a traitor…. Two things are necessary to make a traitor. One is he shall have a country. [Laughter and applause] I believe if I had a country, I should be a patriot. I think I have all the feelings necessary — all the moral material, to say nothing about the intellectual. But when I remember that the blood of four sisters and one brother, is making fat the soil of Maryland and Virginia,—when I remember that an aged grandmother who has reared twelve children for the Southern market, and these one after another as they arrived at the most interesting age, were torn from her bosom,—when I remember that when she became too much racked for toil, she was turned out by a professed Christian master to grope her way in the darkness of old age, literally to die with none to help her, and the institutions of this country sanctioning and sanctifying this crime, I have no words of eulogy, I have no patriotism.[…]
No, I make no pretension to patriotism. So long as my voice can be heard, on this or the other side of the Atlantic, I will hold up America to the lightening scorn of moral indignation. In doing this, I shall feel myself discharging the duty of a true patriot; for he is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins.”
– quoted from the 1847 speech “If I Had a Country, I Should Be a Patriot” by Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was born somewhere in Eastern Maryland in 1817 or 1818. If you’re wondering why I can name the exact time and place that Oscar Wilde’s play premiered a few years later (not to mention the exact time and place of that illustrious playwright’s birth), but cannot specify the time and place of one of the greatest speakers and writers of the 19th Century, it’s because Frederick Douglass was born into slavery. So, there is no heritage birth site you can visit (Covid not withstanding) in the way you can visit 21 Westland Row (the home of the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre in Dublin). You could visit Cedar Hill, the Washington, D. C. house that Mr. Douglass bought about forty years after he escaped from slavery. But, the historical marker related to his birth is at least four miles from where it is assumed he was born.
By all accounts, he was born on the Holme (or Holmes) Hill Farm and most likely in the cabin of his grandmother, Betsey Bailey – which is basically where he lived for the first part of his life. His mother, on the other hand, lived twelve miles away and died when he was about seven years old. Some of his vague memories, as he recounted in his third autobiography, included his mother calling him her “Little Valentine.” Ergo, he celebrated his birthday on February 14th.
Most of what we know about the abolitionist, statesman, and activist, comes from his speeches and his writings, including three autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave; My Bondage and My Freedom, and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. In some ways, each book is an expansion of the previous books, with the third being the most detailed about his escape and activism*. As he explained in his the final book, he left certain details and facts out of the first two books in order to protect himself, the people who helped him escape, and some of the people associated with him.
Since slavery was still active in the United States when his first book was published on May 1, 1845, Mr. Douglass also relocated to England and Ireland for two years in order to ensure he would not be recaptured. While he was in Europe, his supporters paid ($710.96) for his emancipation. That’s about $26,300.66, in today’s economy, that went to the person who had enslaved him.
“This is American slavery; no marriage—no education—the light of the gospel shut out from the dark mind of the bondman—and he forbidden by law to learn to read. If a mother shall teach her children to read, the law in Louisiana proclaims that she may be hanged by the neck. If the father attempt to give his son a knowledge of letters, he may be punished by the whip in one instance, and in another be killed, at the discretion of the court. Three millions of people shut out from the light of knowledge! It is easy for you to conceive the evil that must result from such a state of things.”
– quoted from “APPENDIX, CONTAINING EXTRACTS FROM SPEECHES, ETC – RECEPTION SPEECH AT FINSBURY CHAPEL, MOORFIELDS, ENGLAND, MAY 12, 1846.” in My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
According to his first autobiography, the wife of his second owner, Mrs. Sophia Auld, started teaching a young Frederick Douglass the alphabet. When the lessons were discovered and forbidden, he overheard Mrs. Auld’s husband telling her that an educated slave would be unfit for slavery. This motivated Mr. Douglass to teach himself to read and write. The more he learned, the more he was motivated to be free. He was further motivated to escape when he fell in love with a free Black woman named Anna Murray, who was also a member of the Underground Railroad.
The success of his autobiographies changed the way some people – specifically, white abolitionists – viewed him and treated him. It expanded his audience and also uplifted his platform. While some pro-slavery advocates still saw him as a puppet and a parrot, abolitionists realized that he was actually an intellectual capable of giving very vivid (and compelling) first-hand accounts of the atrocities of slavery. Critics persisted in doubting him, but again and again, he dismantled their doubts and defamation. Furthermore, as he advocated for the civil rights of Africans in America, their descendants, and for all women, he lived a life that had been previously denied him.
“The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one-sixth of the population of democratic America is denied its privileges by the law of the land. What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of its humanity, boasting of its christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?—what must be the condition of that people? I need not lift up the veil by giving you any experience of my own. Every one that can put two ideas together, must see the most fearful results from such a state of things as I have just mentioned.”
– quoted from “APPENDIX, CONTAINING EXTRACTS FROM SPEECHES, ETC – RECEPTION SPEECH AT FINSBURY CHAPEL, MOORFIELDS, ENGLAND, MAY 12, 1846.” in My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray married on September 15, 1838 – just twelve days after his escape from slavery. For a while, they lived under an assumed surname. Frederick Douglass made a living as a public speaker, writer, and publisher. He traveled the world, served as a diplomat, and also served as an Army recruiter. Throughout his lifetime, he influenced people like Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Benjamin Harrison. He was the first African American to be nominated for vice president (in 1872); the first African American person to receive a vote for president during a a major parties roll call (in 1888); and, if we want to get technical, one of the first people to publicly protest Civil War era statues. (He specifically objected to the way former slaves were depicted.)
Frederick Douglass started the first abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, whose motto was “Right is of no Sex – Truth is of no Color – God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren.” He was also the only Black person to (officially) attend the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and the only Black signer of the Declaration of Sentiments.
“Believing that one of the best means of emancipating the slaves of the south is to improve and elevate the character of the free colored people of the north, I shall labor in the future, as I have labored in the past, to promote the moral, social, religious, and intellectual elevation of the free colored people; never forgetting my own humble origin, nor refusing, while Heaven lends me ability, to use my voice, my pen, or my vote, to advocate the great and primary work of the universal and unconditional emancipation of my entire race.”
– quoted from “CHAPTER XXV. VARIOUS INCIDENTS. NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE—UNEXPECTED OPPOSITION—THE OBJECTIONS TO IT—THEIR PLAUSIBILITY ADMITTED—MOTIVES FOR COMING TO ROCHESTER—DISCIPLE OF MR. GARRISON—CHANGE OF OPINION—CAUSES LEADING TO IT—THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CHANGE—PREJUDICE AGAINST COLOR—AMUSING CONDESCENSION—”JIM CROW CARS”—COLLISIONS WITH CONDUCTORS AND BRAKEMEN—TRAINS ORDERED NOT TO STOP AT LYNN—AMUSING DOMESTIC SCENE—SEPARATE TABLES FOR MASTER AND MAN—PREJUDICE UNNATURAL—ILLUSTRATIONS—THE AUTHOR IN HIGH COMPANY—ELEVATION OF THE FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR—PLEDGE FOR THE FUTURE.” of My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray-Douglass had five children. Rosetta Douglass worked on her father’s newspapers and eventually became a teacher, an activist, and a founding member of the National Association for Colored Women. Lewis Henry Douglass worked as a typesetter at The North Star and The Douglass’ Weekly before serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. Frederick Douglass Jr. was also an abolitionist and journalist and who, along with his father, recruited for the Union Army during the Civil War. (Lewis and the two Fredericks would also co-edit The New Era.) Charles Redmond Douglass, also a publisher, is remembered as the first African American to enlist in the Union Army in New York and was one of the first African Americans to serve as a clerk in the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (also known as the Freedmen’s Bureau). He also worked for the United States Treasury and served as a diplomat (as did his father). The fifth Douglass child, Annie, died as an adolescent.
Anna Murray-Douglass died in 1882 and, in 1884, Frederick Douglass married a white abolitionist and radical feminist who was two years his junior. Helen Pitts Douglass co-edited The Alpha and eventually worked as her husbands secretary. After her husband’s death in 1895, the second Mrs. Douglass purchased Cedar Hill from the Douglass children (because her husbands bequest to her was not upheld) and worked to establish the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association. After her death in 1903, the properties reduced mortgage was paid off by the National Association of Colored Women and is currently managed by the National Park Service.
“Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”
– quoted from the “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech by Frederick Douglass (July 5, 1852)
Please join me today (Tuesday, February 14th) at 12:00 PM or 7:15 PM for a yoga practice on Zoom. You can use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.
Tuesday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify.
NOTE: After the Noon practice, I remixed some of the before/after music after the Noon practice – which is slight different on each medium. The Spotify playlist includes Frederick Douglass’s entire “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech, recited by Ossie Davis. The YouTube playlist features a portion of the speech recited by direct descendants of Frederick Douglass.
Practice Notes: This practice is all about heart opening – however, it may not be in the way you expect. There is also some unexpected ways to engage the hips.
“But I should be false to the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I suppressed the opinion. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise.”
– quoted from “CHAPTER V.” of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass
*NOTE: The full title of the third autobiography of Frederick Douglass is Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself. His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History to the Present Time, Including His Connection with the Anti-slavery Movement; His Labors in Great Britain as Well as in His Own Country; His Experience in the Conduct of an Influential Newspaper; His Connection with the Underground Railroad; His Relations with John Brown and the Harper’s Ferry Raid; His Recruiting the 54th and 55th Mass. Colored Regiments; His Interviews with Presidents Lincoln and Johnson; His Appointment by Gen. Grant to Accompany the Santo Domingo Commission–
Also to a Seat in the Council of the District of Columbia; His Appointment as United States Marshal by President R. B. Hayes; Also His Appointment to Be Recorder of Deeds in Washington by President J. A. Garfield; with Many Other Interesting and Important Events of His Most Eventful Life; With an Introduction by Mr. George L. Ruffin, of Boston.
### “I’ve now realized for the first time in my life the vital importance of being Earnest.” ~ OW ###
The Space Between Need, Conceive, & Invention (a special Black History note) February 14, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Books, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, First Nations, Healing Stories, Health, Hope, Life, Music, Pain, Science, Suffering, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.Tags: Adam Kirsch, Allan Bloom, Benjamin Jowett, Black History Month, Brown v Board, Davis v Board, Dorothy Vaughn, Ellington West, HBCUs, Hidden Figures, Hilary Kates Varghese, HistoryMakers, James West, Keith Jarrett, Kevin Murnane, Matilda Omega Miller West, Mike Szczys, Miles Davis, NAACP, NASA, Plato, Pullman, Samuel Edward West, Season of Non-violence, Season of Nonviolence, Technology, Wookiefoot
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!
This is a special post for February 10th. The word for this date is groundedness. Click here if you are interested in other events and people I’ve covered on this date.
“‘Come , now,’ I said, ‘let’s make a city in speech from the beginning. Our need, as it seems, will make it.’”
– quoted from the exchange between Socrates and Adeimantus in 2.XI of The Republic of Plato, translated and with an interpretative essay by Allan Bloom, 1968 (with a new introduction by Adam Kirsch)
(1894 translation by Benjamin Jowett: “Then, I said, let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.”)
If we consider the very beginning of something (or someone) as Socrates and the others do in Plato’s Republic, we find that everything (and everyone) begins as a flicker of something out in the ether. We can call that flicker an idea, for lack of a better word, or we can call it a need – the word Plato uses. Either way, that flicker of something (or someone) is out in the either and then it gets grounded and rooted into something (or someone) – or it sets off a spark – and then from that conception there is creation and then being/existing in reality as we know it. And, even though we can follow that train of thought, there are a lot of things we use on a regular basis that we don’t think about in this way.
We don’t often think about the initial idea/need – unless our need is sudden and acute. Neither do we think very often about the space between that initial idea/need and all the steps that brought it into reality – which means, we don’t think about the people we have to thank for things we use everyday. But, let’s say we were going to think about the inventor of something – like, let’s say, we wanted to thank the person or people responsible for the microphones (and speakerphones) in our phones and other electronic devices. Let’s say, we wanted to thank the person or people responsible for the technology inside hearing aids, audio recording devices, video recorders, baby monitors, computers, and cell phones.
Be honest. If you were to imagine such a person (or people), what’s the first idea of a person that comes to mind?
Be honest.
Would you be surprised that one of their parents worked for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at Langley Research Center? Probably not. Would you guess that they were still in college when they started inventing things that would change the world? Probably not. But, if you weren’t think of this person in the context of this special post, would you imagine someone whose grandparents were enslaved and who was born in a house because the local hospitals wouldn’t admit their mother (that NASA employee)? Possibly not. And yet…
“James’ approach to learning sounds very familiar: ‘If I had a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, anything that could be opened was in danger. I had this need to know what was inside.’”
– quoted from “James West Began 40 Years at Bell Labs with World-Changing Microphone Tech” by Mike Szczys (posted at hackaday.com on February 17, 2021)
Let’s start with Matilda Omega Miller West. She worked at Langley Air Force Base as a teacher and also as one of the NASA (human) computers that we now recognize as “Hidden Figures.” In fact, she was distantly related to Dorothy Vaughn, who became the first African American woman to receive a promotion and supervise a group of staff at the center when she was named acting supervisor of the West Area Computers in 1949. Mrs. West was also an active and prominent member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as well as at least one other organization that the government viewed with suspicion. When she lost her job at NASA because of her political activism, she started teaching at a Native American reservation in Pennsylvania. She was married to Samuel Edward West, who held a variety of jobs, including owning a funeral home owner, working as an insurance salesman, and as a Pullman porter on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The Wests had two children (James and Nathaniel); however, as they had to travel in order to work, their two sons were left in the care of Matilda West’s mother – who had formerly been enslaved.
The oldest of the West children, James Edward Maceo West, was born February 10, 1931, in Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia. He was a super curious kid, who wanted to understand how things worked. At an early age, he was taking things a part and poking around in things. He once took apart his grandfather’s pocket watch and discovered it had 107 parts, but then couldn’t put it back together again. Another time, he found a broken radio in the trash and set out to fix it. When he thought he was successful, he needed to plug it in; so, he climbed up on a bed, held onto the brass headboard, and plugged into a light socket. Needless to say, he shocked himself and probably would have died if his brother Nathaniel hadn’t knocked him off the bed. The family would have probably loved it, on some level, if either of those incidents had discouraged young James West from tinkering. Since, however, he was not deterred, they had to find other ways to channel his energy and inquisitive nature and he ended up working with a cousin who wired electricity for houses in rural Virginia.
“Describing the experience later, he said that when things happen that he doesn’t understand ‘… I have to figure them out. I have to learn. And that’s essentially what led to some of the discoveries that I made, you know, the curiosity. Well, why does nature behave in that way? You know, what are the compelling parameters around the way nature behaves? And how can I better understand the physical principles that I’m dealing with? You know, it’s still a big part of my life.’”
– quoted from the Biz & IT section of Ars Technica, in an article entitled “Listen up: James West forever changed the way we hear the world – Now in his 80s, the legendary inventor still pursues research and fights for education.” by Kevin Murnane (dated 5/8/2016)
Growing up in Farmville, in the twentieth century, was challenging for African Americans. It was a time when education and job opportunities were subpar in areas like Virginia. There was an all-white school across the street from where he grew up. There was a an all-Black school (Robert Russa Moton High School) on the other side of town; but, that school lacked some very important resources, including: a gym, a cafeteria, indoor bathrooms, and blackboards. There were no science labs and a lack of classrooms, in general, meant that some classes were held inside of a school bus. On top of all that, R. R. Moton High School received the discarded books from the all-white school; so, they were dog-eared and out-of-date.
James West was scheduled to start high school long before 16-year old Barbara Rose Johns Powell led a student strike in April 1951, and long before Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Docket number: Civ. A. No. 1333; Case citation: 103 F. Supp. 337 (1952)) was rolled into Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Since the Wests valued education, and had the means to do so, they decided to send their son to Phenix High School in Hampton, Virginia. Phenix HS, established the same year James West was born, was an all-Black feeder school for Hampton Institute (now known as Hampton University), one of the private Historically Black Universities and Colleges (HBCUs), and it trained students to be teachers, even requiring them to be student teachers. The Wests expected their son to to follow a plan that included pre-med at Hampton, medical school, and a job with an uncle who had built a clinic and started a practice – and he did follow the plan, for a while, but he was still compelled to tinker.
“In life, racism was my biggest obstacle. I always felt like if I was white, would I have had a better life? I don’t know because I really do have fun. But I had to pay attention to things that more directly affected me than others. For example, I got an email from a colleague a few days ago that said basically I wish I hadn’t accused you of conspiracy theory as much as I did. We used to have lunch together and talk about the disparities between the races, and now he finally understood why I was so upset by getting continuously stopped by police on my way to work through an all-white community.
Now more people understand why the fear is there.”
– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)
In high school, James West and a friend built their own telephone system. When he graduated from high school, he followed the plan, but he couldn’t get into it; so, he made plans to transfer to Wilberforce University (another HBCU) in Wilberforce, Ohio. His parents tried to dissuade him – even introducing him to two Black PhDs who couldn’t find jobs because of their race. James West, however, had that will and determination – that compulsion – that can only be considered a calling. He would not be moved off the course he had set for himself. But then, he was drafted by the United States Army during the Korean War.
After being wounded in combat, and receiving two Purple Hearts, James West went back to school. This time he decided to study Physics at Temple University, an integrated school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There were, however, some race-related challenges. Temple was founded around the idea of study groups, but the study groups in his department kept rejecting him because of his race. Taking a page from women in his family (like his mother and Dorothy Vaughn), James West decided to show the white students what he could do – what his mind could do. Being able to solve complex equations earned him invitations to the very groups that had rejected him. Suspecting that he might face similar issues on the job front, he applied to pretty much every internship he could find. In 1957, he started his first summer internship at Bell Telephone Laboratories (now Nokia Bell Labs) and felt like it could be his professional home.
“I found Bell Labs to be among the few places that I felt as a Black male, that I would have a comfortable and prosperous career. I measured and monitored this is terms of the number of underrepresented minorities and women that I saw in roles that I might eventually want to be a part of.”
– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)
As part of his internship, James West started working in the Acoustic Research department where he studying interaural time delay (ITD), which is the time lapse between when each ear detects a sound and is a major part of how humans locate the source of a sound. The lab was re-purposing microphone technology, but the results were limiting their research – the system produced frequencies so low that very few people could hear the full spectrum of frequencies. The future Dr. West, still in college, dug up a German research paper (on solid dielectric elements) and completely revamped the test equipment. His new system produced more sound; thereby, creating better testing conditions. The professional scientists were impressed and James West was energized when he went back to school. Two or three months later, there was a problem: the intern’s system had stopped working. Since none of the professionals had done the research to understand the system, they sent the young Temple student a ticket back to Murray Hill, New Jersey.
James West could fix the problem, but he couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. In order to make that guarantee, he had to understand the technology better. That was his need; that is what compelled him to make an even better sound system. As he researched electrets (basically, electricity magnets), he started working with Gerhard Sessler, a scientist originally from Germany. Dr. Sessler was exactly five days younger than James West, but he his education had not been interrupted by war. He studied physics at the Universities of Freiburg and Munich (where he earned his diploma in 1957); earned his PhD (from the University of Göttingen in 1959; and then moved to the United States to work at Bell Labs. In 1962, James West and Gerhard Sessler invented the electroacoustic transducer, the technology for the foil electret microphone.
US Patent No. 3118022 would be the first of over 100 (US and international) patents for Gerhard Sessler and over 450 (US and international) patents for James West. It would revolutionize the way people hear sound via electronic equipment and it would change James West’s life. To this day, 90% of all devices that relay sound do so using this technology. As for it’s American co-inventor, he would never go back to Temple (as a student). James West would continue working at Bell Labs, moving over to Lucent Technology, Inc. after it was created through a 1996 divestiture of the former AT&T Technologies business unit of AT&T Corporation (which included Western Electric and Bell Labs). Throughout his career, his work has been published in journals and books.
After over 40 years of service, James West retired and was recognized as a Bell Laboratories Fellow. That same year, in 2001, he started teaching at Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research at Johns Hopkins has included studying the acoustics of hospitals in order to find noise-cancelling solutions and developing technology for a smart stethoscope that cancels out background noise and can detect things like pneumonia and lung cancer. One of his daughters*, Ellington West, is CEO of the company that would take that digital stethoscope to market.
“I turned down the lower level management opportunities because I did not see a clear ladder of progress in management as a Black male. I remained in the lab and retired in 2001 at the highest rank of non-management, a Bell Labs Fellow. ”
– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)
As I already mentioned, James West has always been curious and he was fortunate to have parents and extended family that fostered his ingenuity – even when they thought he was applying it in the wrong way (and they withdrew financial support). But, he proved himself to his parents, just as he proved himself to the Temple study groups and to the world. He was named New Jersey’s Inventor of the Year in 1995; elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1998; inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1999; received an honorary doctorate from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in 2007; and received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering (along with Gerhard Sessler) in 2010.
Throughout his career, Dr. James West has supported opportunities for others to follow in his footsteps and to stand on his shoulders: to fill needs and discover opportunities regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, and/or perceived ability. He is the co-founder of Bell’s Association of Black Laboratory Employees (ABLE); helped create and develop the Corporate Research Fellowship Program (CRFP) for graduate students pursuing terminal degrees in the sciences and the Summer Research Program (SRP); and has served on the board of directors of the Ingenuity Project, “a comprehensive, advanced math and science instructional [non-profit] program for Baltimore City students in grades 6-12.”
“‘My father is my hero, role model, my greatest inspiration,’ [Ellington] West, 34, once told an interviewer.”
– quoted from the Citybiz+ article entitled “Sonavi Lab’s CEO Ellington West: Black Entrepreneur On A Mission To Fight Bias And Save Lives” (dated August 10, 2022)
Practice Notes: As I write this post, I am listening to jazz (beginning with Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert) – music I always associate with being fearless, engaging in fearless play, and improvising. A practice dedicated to James West would be a practice where we delve into how things work and how things don’t work (or don’t work well). Then, we would be fearless and play – remembering the rules of improv: not breaking the flow, saying “yes and,” knowing the rules in order to break the rules, and (from the musical side) playing what’s not there. This would be a vinyāsa krama practice, with “things placed in a special way” “for a step-by-step progression” towards a peak pose (possibly Naṭarājāsana, “Dancer Pose.” The primary goals here would be to have fund and to listen to your mind-body.
*NOTE: James West and his wife Marlene have four adult children: Melanie, Laurie, James and Ellington. I would normally include more information, but could not find accurate information about when/how they met and what the other West children do for a living. He does talk about his family and his life choices in the interview conducted by The HistoryMakers, but I do not have access to those interviews. Many of the above quotes (except where indicated) are originally from The HistoryMakers® Video Oral History Interview with James West, February 13, 2013. The HistoryMakers® African American Video Oral History Collection, 1900 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.
### “And up on a hill in Rishikesh I came across a holy man / With shining eyes and a toothless smile / He grinned and this is what he said / ‘There’s nothing so tall we can’t climb over / There’s nothing so wide we can not cross / The time has come to raise your voices / The light burns brightest when all hope seems lost / Be Fearless and Play’” ~ Wookiefoot ###
A Tree of Many Seasons (a special Black History note) February 13, 2023
Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Buddhism, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Faith, Gratitude, Healing Stories, Hope, One Hoop, Pain, Philosophy, Suffering, Texas, Volunteer, Wisdom, Women, Yoga.Tags: Black History Month, Black Women Oral History, Civil Rights Movement, Dallas Texas, Dorothy R. Robinson, Juanita Jewel Craft, Lisa Young, NAACP, Suffragists, Tuscaloosa, Yoga Sutra 3.53
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!
This is a special post for February 9th. The word for this date is contemplate and the following post is full of things for you to contemplate with a focus on non-violence.Click here if you are interested in other events I’ve covered on this date.
“[The president of the Tuscaloosa Branch of the NAACP, Lisa Young,] she was ‘angry and part of me feels like we failed our students. We want to see what we can do to assist them, and make their school a safe place.’”
– quoted from the Tuscaloosa News article entitled “Hillcrest High students say they were told to limit Black History Month program” by The Associated Press (pub. Feb. 9, 2023)
This past Wednesday (2/8), about 200 students from Hillcrest High School, part of Tuscaloosa County Schools System in Alabama, staged a walkout. According to some of the students, they were told to focus their special Black History Month program on “recent history.” School officials have denied the allegations. No one, however, is denying that a lot of students were protesting… something.
It’s hard to know if the allegations are true – except for the fact that it passes the sniff test. There are a lot of people, even in education, who might not see the idea as problematic. To me, it’s problematic, because the idea of focusing on “recent” Black history reminds me a little to much of the recent use of the phrase “make America great again.” The inevitable (and unavoidable) question is: When was America great? No shade, and this isn’t even about my opinions on the matter. It’s more about defining a statement that is very vague and open to interpretation. Everyone has a different idea of when the country was great and/or if it’s ever been great (whatever that word means to you at this moment). It’s a very subjective idea – as is the concept of “recent history.”
In the Tuscaloosa County situation, students were allegedly given very specific parameters: focus on Black history after 1970; so, nothing related to slavery, the Civil War and the end of legal slavery in the United States; and/or anything related to the Civil Rights Movement.
That’s weird, right? I mean, Black History – just like the history of every other group in America – is part of American History. How weird would it be if you attended a celebration of American History and there was no mention of the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolutionary War, and/or the moon landing?
Oh, “Wait,” you say? Summer of 1969 is close enough to 1970 to talk about the moon landing? (Well, it’s OK, unless you don’t believe it happened.) But, how do you explain that Project Apollo was conceived during President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration (in the 1950s) and that President John F. Kennedy mentioned it in a speech to the joint sessions of the United States Congress in 1961? After all, history does not exist in a vacuum.
“Mexican-Americans, Mexican youth who were born in this country, whose heritage is this country, are not accepted. At the City Council of which I am a member at this time, we have not a single Mexican down there in a policy-making position. I am concerned because I think that they should have representation. If taxation without representation was important in the founding of this country, it is important now.
I had a woman say to me one day that, ‘I think these Mexicans should go back to Mexico where they came from.’ Immediately I said to her, ‘This is Mexico – this part of Mexico has been sold to us. These people have a right here, just like every other ethnic group.’ It‘s amazing to me that this country is a melting pot, made up of people from all over the world – of lands all over the world – and yet they would want to deny those of color, they‘re rights and privileges.”
– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)
History, as we experience it, is a linear, one-dimension continuum – even though, we are able to learn about it in a multi-dimensional way. We are simultaneously able to learn about things that happened at the same time, but in different parts of the country or world – just as we are able to comprehend how one event layers over another event… and then another, to bring us to the present moment. In fact, in Yoga Sūtra 3.53, Patanjali wrote that the highest form of discernment comes from applying concentrated awareness on “the moment and its sequence/succession.”
Again, it’s important to remember that nothing happening now is happening in a vacuum. For instance, when we talk about women who influence politics today, we have to acknowledge, on some level, that women in this country have always been influencing politics – even when they couldn’t vote and/or run for office. Women like Stacy Abrams are directly connected to women like Mrs. Phoebe E. Burn, a.k.a.“Miss Feeb” or “Feeb” (not to mention Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton). They are connected through their activism and by way of a lot of unnamed women throughout history. Of course, that comparison may rankle if you know the history of Black women and the suffragist movement so, maybe we don’t go back that far. Maybe we stick to “recent history” and just say that the women of today (regardless of their race and/or ethnicity), are directly connected to Mrs. Juanita Craft of east Texas.
“Mrs. Craft, on behalf of the project, I want to thank you for lending yourself to this interview. Personally, I think it is a tremendous project and that it fills an urgent need in our nation. It isn‘t that Black women have not made history; it is that the history they made has not been extensively recorded and carefully preserved.”
– Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (Juanita Jewel Craft interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)
Born in Round Rock, Texas on February 9, 1902, Juanita Jewel Craft (née Shanks) was on only child for most of her life. Her grandparents were enslaved people transported directly from Virginia and by way of Tennessee. Her father, David Shanks, was a high school principal. Her mother, Eliza Shanks (née Balfour), was a teacher and seamstress who taught her daughter the skills that she valued. Given that background, it makes sense that, after graduating from high school in Austin, the future Mrs. Craft went to Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College (now Prairie View A&M University), where she earned a certificate in dressmaking and millinery (in 1921) and then went back to Austin in order to earn a teaching certificate from Samuel Huston College (now Huston-Tillotson College). She taught kindergarten in Columbus (about halfway between Austin and Houston) and then she moved to Galveston, where she got married. Unfortunately, here first marriage ended and moved to Dallas, where she worked as a maid at the Adolphus Hotel, as well as as a dressmaker.
By her own account, she didn’t make a lot of money, but she figured out a way to manage. She wanted, however, to do more than just manage. So, in 1935, she joined the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She married Johnny Edward Craft (on October 2, 1937), but that didn’t stop her activism. in fact, her marriage just allowed her to focus on the activism without having to work and she was appointed the Dallas NAACP membership chairman in 1942. Two years later, when the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled in Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944) that Texas laws allowing things like “white primaries” were unconstitutional, Juanita Craft became the first African American* woman in Dallas County to vote in a Democratic Party primary.
Several things happened, in 1946, that started advancing Juanita Craft’s prominence in the state and in the country. In addition to being named the Texas NAACP field organizer, she was also named as Youth Council advisor of the Dallas NAACP, and became the first African American woman deputized by the State of Texas to collect the poll tax. During this same time period, she and Lulu Belle White (of the Houston chapter of the NAACP) began organizing new Texas chapters of the NAACP. Over an eleven year period, they would organize 182 Texas branches.
“In 1961, we started working on the theatres and the lunch counters. At which time, we picketed. We stood-in at the theatres. And you know, it got to be quite interesting. The way we performed. A youth would walk up to the window at the theatre and ask for an admission ticket. And when that youth was denied – without any further conversation – he would walk back to the end of the line, and go right through it again.
There was a complete circle. Students from SMU and other areas around Dallas joined us in our protest.
The thing that would worry me was that a lot of older people could not see our need, or did not join us. I‘ve had friends to say, ‘I came down to see the line.’ I would immediately ask them, ‘Did you bring a bottle of Coke? Or did you bring a sandwich to one of those kids?’
And I have seen those kids so dedicated to breaking the chain that was binding them. But they were, would [pause] – They would walk until their shoes became unbearable and they would continue to walk until they‘d worn out the feet of their hose.”
– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)
The impact of Juanita Craft’s organizing is most obvious when you look at her work with the Youth Council, work that made the Dallas group a model for other chapters. She fought to get African American students enrolled at North Texas State College (now North Texas State University). Then, as more educational opportunities opened up for African American students, she fought to ensure that the students were physically safe and given what they had been promised. When fraudulent trade schools were promising luxury dorms, meals, and jobs – but providing none of what was promised – she fought for better housing and found jobs for the students. She also fed them. Sometimes you took meals to the students who were facing discrimination at the universities. Other times, the students came to her home for meals. All the while, she was feeding information to officials.
She organized protests at the State Fair of Texas – which, at the time, only admitting Blacks on “Negro Achievement Day” – and organized anti-segregation protests at lunch counters, restaurants, theaters, and public transportation to protest segregation. There were sit-ins, stand-ins, and freedom walks. In one instance, members of the Youth Council would buy something inside of a store and then take their purchase to the store’s lunch counter (where they could not be served), each student would politely ask why they could buy something like poster board in the store, but not be served. After asking the server, they would ask for a manager. Then, after speaking to the manager, they would leave and the next student would enter, also with a purchase of some kind.
The systems the Youth Council used were effective and adopted by adults who continued the fight, but everything the council did was not overt activism. Above and beyond anything else, Juanita Craft mentored the youth of Dallas. She raised money in order to take members of the council, as well as integrated student groups, on field trips to learn about running a business, to visit NAACP chapters in other states, and to visit members of Congress in order to better understand how the state and country were governed. She also took the kids sightseeing to see places like the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, the Pacific Ocean, and the Eastern seaboard. On every trip, she ensured that the students visited colleges and universities in the area. She also ran “Stay in School” and “Anti-Riot” campaigns that featured bumper stickers and placards with catchy slogans in English and Spanish, including: “Learn and Earn; Stay in School.”, “I’m Going Back to School. What About You?”, “Keep It Cool. Don’t Be Fool.”, “Think Before You Act.” and “Don’t.”
“The only thing that I could say, in defense of my being on the [City] Council, is an old stupid woman who wasn‘t satisfied with those persons that were running to fill the unexpired term left on the Council in this district. I think that that‘s a slogan that I‘ve carried with me – If I don’t like what the other fellow‘s doing, I get up and do it myself.”
– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)
Her civic engagement continued even after her husband died in 1950. Juanita Craft served as Democratic precinct chairman (1952 – 1975) and served two terms on the Dallas City Council for District 6 (1975 – 1979). While on the City Council, she focused on a major drug and alcohol reduction program, subsidized housing, historic preservation, strengthening code enforcement and environmental ordinances, and animal control. Additional , she was an active member of the Munger Avenue Baptist Church, the Democratic Women’s Club, the YWCA, the League of Women Voters, and the National Council of Negro Women, as well as local, state, and national boards of the Urban League of Greater Dallas, Goals for Dallas, Dallas United Nations, and the Governor’s Human Relations Committee. Her took her from Dallas to San Francisco to St. Paul, Minnesota, to Washington, D. C. to Arlington, Virginia, and then back down to the South. Through it all, she continued to work with the NAACP.
Much of Juanita Craft’s activism led to litigation that led to new legislation on the local, state, and federal level – like aforementioned investigation into fraudulent trade-schools in Dallas – and that kind of legal activism meant students were not the only people congregating around her dining room table. People like future SCOTUS Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall (then-lead council for the NAACP’s national office) and Martin Luther King Jr. were frequent visitors. They were not, however, the only political luminaries that graced her presence. By the end of her life, she would meet Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter, and she would be invited to the White House on multiple occasions.
Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft received a lot praise and accolades in her day. However, when she was asked to name one of the awards that was most significant, she couldn’t do it; saying instead that “all of them are precious to me because all of them have had… a little something that was indeed outstanding. It would be hard for me to say which one was most important or which activity had been most important.” Then, she related a story about a horrible incident in Dallas that led to activism that resulted in people being able to vote. She didn’t care about the awards; she cared about the rewards of people having the Constitutional rights.
“I was really disturbed when they told me there that there wasn‘t a law in the State of Texas that would protect them. Well, I said, ‘If we don‘t have a law, we‘re going to get some laws, because this is ridiculous.”
– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)
Practice Notes: My maternal grandmother was passionate about a lot of things, including registering people to vote. I never thought to ask her if she knew Juanita Craft, because the fact that they ran in the same Texas circles was not on my radar. That said, if I led a class dedicated to Mrs. Craft, I might think about what kind of practice my grandmother would have appreciated and what kind of practice might be appropriate for those students standing in the picket lines. So, it would be something “restorative” in nature, maybe with supported backbends, “Humble Warriors,” something for the hips, and something for the feet (like a little ball rolling). I would encourage props – especially for some prone heart-releasing – and there would definitely be “Legs-Up-the-Wall/Chair” (variations of Viparita Karani).
Remember, activism takes it’s toll and you can not be of use to anyone if you burn out.
“My life does not belong to me. I have no particular family, some cousins, but I have nobody that I‘m particularly responsible to. Therefore, I have adopted everybody. and I feel that if I can make any contribution to the lives of any person I want to be about that.”
– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)
*NOTE: Regarding nomenclature, I have spoken before about the different names legally applied to people of color in the United States, as well as how those legal terms are adopted and/or rejected by the people to whom they are applied. The names, just like the idea of race, are social constructed and have changed over time. Most biographies about Juanita Craft use the word “Black,” but she was very clear that she did not appreciate the term and, therefore, I have not used it here in the way I have in other notes.
A Joyful Practice 