Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

Above is a picture of my pisanki, highly-decorated Easter eggs given me by a dear friend. They appear in my dining room at the beginning of Lent every year, and never fail to grace my Easter table. I dyed some hard-boiled eggs as well, but it would not be Easter without the pisanki, those reminders of spring and resurrection.  Aside from the pisanki, nothing about Easter was normal, and I feel I turned into an Easter Grinch. Church, of course, was online. I’m getting adjusted to that, but my laptop kept notifying me that my internet connection was unstable. We had many attendees, which may have been a factor. In any case, audio and video kept freezing for me, especially during the sermon, which was unfortunate. I needed a few words of hope and glory! Grinch grumbling on my end occurred.  At dinner, there were only three of us this year. Our son’s girlfriend had been invited, but she is quarantined up in Bergen County, one of our New Jersey hotspots. Our daughter, her fiancé, and his ki

Last week, I joined a small meditation group hosted every weekday at noon by a friend with whom I went to seminary.  Meditation is always a good thing, but it seemed to me that I needed discipline and accountability with my meditation practice right now (since it tends to be spotty under normal circumstances).  The first week, the sessions were devoted to tonglen , a type of meditation involving breathing in the suffering of others, then breathing out compassion. It's more complicated than that, probably, but that is how we boiled it down for our own purposes. It can lead to a feeling of heaviness and sadness, but also to a sense of having added, even if by a tiny fraction, to the amount of compassionate, healing energy in the world. Since I'm not an essential worker, it gave me something purposeful to do right now, besides cowering in my house.  If you're interested, a resource is listed below. Yesterday, we tried something different: chanting with Amma.  If y