Grace

(I totally stole that title). I was doing yoga today; gentle, flowing yoga to try and center myself and my hurt knee and gain a little perspective on both. And as I did this yoga, I began to think about grace.

I am lucky enough to have had two amazing yoginis in my practice and life. Lisa and Sharon, in North Carolina and New Hampshire respectively, are both kind, lovely, insightful and patient teachers. One day Sharon spoke about grace during a particularly painful yoga session- reference the King Pigeon pose, and then pretend you also run about 20-25 miles a week, if you want to gauge just how painful. She was talking about finding and embracing and emitting the grace within ourselves and in the world around us. This is an easy thing to conceptualize when you are living in an idyllic setting in New England and planning on making a stop at the local food co-op on your way home from said brutal yoga class. Less easy when you are not.

So today, that's what I tried to do. I thought if I could tap into that grace, I could grit my teeth and bear the winter that has long overstayed it's welcome here in Chengdu (it's about 50 degrees and rainy out- as it has been for the past 3 weeks). If I could find that well of grace within me, I could not go as stir crazy as I am capable during this prolonged knee injury. And if I can find the grace in myself, surely I can find the grace of the world around me. Don't get me wrong- I believe that the natural world has more grace than any other source- I have no problem finding that. It's literally the world around me- cold, polluted, occasionally post-apocalyptical Chengdu. Seriously. It sometimes look like the Thunderdome here.

Which brings me to my next point. Today is March 26, Earth Hour (for more information see www.earthhour.org). And I cannot think of a more graceful way to embrace this world around me that to turn off the lights for an hour tonight (yet another plug- Earth Hour always occurs at 830pm whatever your local time is). I have participated in this...event, I guess, is the right word... for the past two years, this will be my third. I love what it means, what it represents. Turn off your lights for an hour and prove to the world population that Look- it is easy. Turn off your lights for an hour and let nature take a breath, a deep one. Turn off your lights for an hour and recognize that the Earth is precious, and it is powerful, and it sometimes needs an hour off. That, to me, is grace.

I know that I sound like an ad for this thing, and that I sound a bit preachy and silly. But this is important to me, it has been since I discovered it. It's so stupidly simple that it may just save the world yet.

Cheers my friends,
Until next time.