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Showing posts from November, 2012

Working Meditation

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I'm not sitting with a still body and mind. I'm not walking a winding path, quieting the clamor in my head. I'm working. I'm standing outside at the door, waving in cars and walking women and their companions into the building. I'm chatting mindlessly, trying to give them something to hear and focus on, something to drown out the cries of, "They kill babies here!" I'm standing on the sidewalk, waiting. Escorting at a local women's health center on the mornings they provide abortions is an exercise in living my personal values and religious principles. I am not Buddhist, but many of the principles of Buddhism inform my personal, spiritual development, chief among them  Mettā , or LovingKindness. There are seven principles of Unitarian Universalism , but the first two in particular have called to me, planted themselves deep in my mind, begging me to nurture and cultivate them. I'm trying to shape myself into a person whose default set