Dear friends,
This Sunday, December 20th, we gather to enjoy our annual Pot Luck from 2:00pm-4:00PM at Bard Hall, First United Unitarian Church before our usual Sangha gathering from 4:00-6:00PM. We hope you can make it, even if we haven’t seen much of you this year. It’s a wonderful opportunity to come together as a community and build our brotherhood and sisterhood.
The Pot Luck will be at Bard Hall, just downstairs from where we usually meet, from 4-6. Some notes from Marge follow:
We encourage you to bring vegan food, and you are also asked to bring your own table setting and water bottle or other personal non-alcoholic beverage. We will not have access to the kitchen, so it may make your clean up easier if you bring a plastic bag to put your dirty dishes in to take home and wash. We may make some music, listen to one another play, and/or sing some holiday songs. If you have musical instruments to play, bring them along, or if you have words to holiday songs, you may bring them, too. We’ll also have more time to socialize than we do at our regular gatherings. Please let Marge know if you are coming (margewur (at) cox.net), so we can have enough tables and chairs. Thanks!
Sangha: After enjoying edible nourishment we have another treat as Dharmacharya Richard Brady “True Dharma Bridge” is visiting San Diego and graciously offered to share with us.
Richard became a member of the Order of Interbeing in 1992 and received Lamp Transmission from Thay in 2001 with a special focus on cultivating mindfulness in young people. He is a founder of the Mindfulness in Education Network, co-founded the Washington Mindfulness Community (DC) in 1989 and the Mountains and Rivers Mindfulness Community (VT) in 2008. He is active in Wake Up schools, is a retreat leader, writer, conference coordinator, and educational consultant. Some of his writing is available on the Resources page of his Minding Your Life Website. Richard taught high school mathematics at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC for 34 years before retiring in 2007 in order to devote all his energy to supporting mindfulness in education.
When selected to become a Dharma Teacher and receive the Lamp Transmission one offers an Insight Gatha and receives one from him in return. Below is the poem Richard offered to Thay and the Sangha on the day of his Lamp Transmission:
This freedom—not freedom from,
from childhood habits,
from childhood fears;
not freedom to,
to open to the love enfolding me,
to know and live my truth.
This freedom—freedom with, with habits, with fears, with heart protected, truth hidden deep inside.
This freedom—freedom with this moment, just as it is.
We hope you can join us this Sunday. If not, enjoy the moments wherever you may be.
Peace,
Pete
practicing mindfulness in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh