Reframing the pain that can come from self-care, through gratitude and self-compassion.

Imagine if someone had something of value, something of enormous value. Imagine if this friend said, “I have to leave the country for a while. I need someone to take care of this thing of enormous value. It requires exquisite care right now. I’d trust you with my life, and this thing is that important to me. Would you please keep it while I’m away, and take exquisite care of it?”

We grieve.

Of course we grieve. Only the very unconscious would not grieve the shooting at Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh.

We grieve the loss of life, and the impact of that loss on families, friends, communities, and all who have a sense of kinship with this community.

We grieve what we fear this murderous act might say about the state of the nation, the state of the world, and where we might be headed. We grieve that what it might say is that the tribal world view, a view of us-versus-them, that spawns not only anti-Semitism but every other -ism of its kind -- racism, sexism, and the rest -- is still widespread in our species.

We grieve our sense of helplessness, our apparent inability to stop the madness.

Yet, we are not helpless.

Exploring the spiritual metaphor offered by the Indian stringed instrument, the esraj.

In this post I announce my new page on Teachers and Influences. I begin this week with Jerry Jud and Marc Gafni.