The night of the U.S. election, I stayed committed to attending my Tuesday night yoga class. What I love about this class is the spiritual teachings that are shared and applied to physical practice, on and off the mat. This teacher has been leading us through the yamas and niyamas, and the topic that night was tapas. The Sanksrit word tapas means heat, or to burn. In yoga this refers to the spiritual discipline to stay the course despite the rising heat.
It’s late springtime in New York City, and these Lenape lands are blooming. From birdsong to blossoms, Easter to Eid, and Nowruz to Navami, this season has been synonymous with the sacred for a long time. It is ribboned with ritual, (re)birth, and recalibration. At the same time, we have witnessed a striking contrast from the spring equinox to a total solar eclipse, followed by unexpected earthquakes in New York. We are still experiencing violence at mass scale in many places, from Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Haiti, Ukraine to the United States, here in the empire of democracy. The volatility of this time is visible and visceral.
In the past month we have been living in the sacred times of Ramadan, Navratri, Baisakhi, Passover, Easter, and National Poetry Month. And that’s just what I’m aware of. There is so much more. I hope you have been able to celebrate these in community, meaningfully in ways that honor their significance, whether the rituals are inherited or carved out from your own intentions and values.
Happy International Women’s Day! I’m inspired by the Astraea Foundation’s words - “This Women’s History Month, we are celebrating the Black, Indigenous, People of Color, migrant, lesbian, bisexual, trans, intersex, and queer women who have and continue to work to free us all. These are the women leading powerful, intersectional grassroots movements; imagining a world free from policing, surveillance, and criminalization; building a culture of collective care, solidarity, healing, and joy. These are the women leading us to our collective liberation.”
