Update, say farewell to "Our Town"

Just a quick note. I should be at Lotus Garden for Khandro Rinpoche right now, but I got sick last week (cold/flu, something like that) and missed work, and decided taking an illness out to the land would not be a good karmic thing. So I am at home. I plan to go out to join the Retreat in progress Thursday morning. Other than that, just life - work has been busy, since we lost 2 people on our 6-person team. Everything else is kind of in statis - which is a rare and beautiful thing, really, and I knopw it will change.

In the meantime, a little musical offering : Iris Dement performing "Our Town" with "The Grey Ghost", Emmylou Harris, on harmony vocals.

I heard a Shambhala sangha member out in Colorado requested his son play this clip right before he left his home to go to hospice care to die. Haunting. And yes, this is the song from the very end of "Northern Exposure". That show is so intertwined with my life in the 90's, I can't watch that clip now w/o crying.

When I die, and/or if I ever end up going into long-term retreat, I'd like to listen to this and Sia's "Breathe Me" right before I go.

Update; One Year since Lucinda's Death

A brief update.  I have been working for the past month as part of the web team on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) - formerly the INS- website. It's going pretty good so far. As much as I valued having more practice time, that "getting paid" thing certainly has it's advantages. :)

...especially since our ceiling needed to be replaced in our back bedroom, since the fan shifted in the course of one day to a dangerous "imminent risk of collapse".  So, our apt is filled w/ stuff, to allow someone to come in and fix it (and paint the room while they were at it).  It is forcing us to go through our @#@$ and get rid of a lot of stuff - minimalizing, I suppose.

This weekend, some of the DC Khandro Rinpoche group got together to do the Mindrolling Lineage Vajrasattva (aka "Dor Sem") full sadhana practice. It felt great to do it again - though it has been several months and it was comically/painfully obvious we were all out of practice with the practice. :)

As we were doing it, someone mentioned that it had been exactly a year since our dear Lucinda Peach's death. I am thinking that got us all thinking a bit more about how we are practicing, and what we are doing with our lives.  It certainly did for me.

...and on that note, good night, and good luck. If all goes well, until later.

-JTR