 By Laura Crosby
In the spirit of “everything and everyone is a teacher,” what you are about to read is a simple reflection on how mindfulness practice is present and relevant in unexpected ways. While drawn from recent events, politics are entirely beside the point (well, almost entirely). On November 3, 2024, the poet Alison Luterman shared, “Holding Vigil.” Within hours, it flew around the world in posts, texts, emails, phone calls, podcasts, and meditation rooms like ours at The Center. Read and re-read in conversation and community. You will find the poem in full below. Why? Why did this poem go “viral” with such a sense of urgency? It might be a few things: The way it met people precisely where they were aching in that moment. The way it offered “a moment of unity,” reminding us how many — “every single blessed being on the face of the earth” — were feeling the weight, if not worry, of the time. And it helped us understand that what we were doing was a kind of holding vigil. That the ache, unity, and magnitude of the moment was calling us to pause in observance of an uncertain end and beginning. When we hold vigil, we keep awake and pay quiet, watchful attention even during the time usually spent asleep. Some keep vigil in prayer or protest; hand-in-hand or bedside in honor of dying, death, and difficult change. We bring our vigilance to the import of each moment, tenderly holding the beings we share it with and the feelings that arise. This is quite unlike hypervigilance, in which there is exaggerated reactivity and confusion. From a mindfulness perspective, what makes this poem so significant is that it parallels how we practice: Meeting ourselves and others where we are in each moment. Not where we think we should be or would like to be. Starting right where we are, going to where it hurts or to what’s most true, and meeting the sufferings and joys with awareness. As the beloved teacher Vinny Ferraro says, “We show up, surrender, and care about what arises.” Through practice, coming to see that we are not separate or alone. That just like us others are experiencing fear, anger, and grief. Seeing our “interbeing” with all of life can unwind the binds of self-obsession. Staying awake to our life in a vigil-like willingness to be present with whatever arises. Bringing kind awareness and compassion to moments of intense difficulty — when we most want to escape into “sleep” — as well as to moments of profound ease, joy, and gratitude. The poem also contains discomfort, despair. A suffering that often brings people to mindfulness practice. To the healing and equanimity of moment-to-moment awareness. Grounded, relaxed, open, attentive, ready to see clearly and act wisely. It’s been just 200 days since Luterman released her poem. To say that much has happened understates the immense upheaval and toll of this time. Add to this the waves of gains and loss in our own lives, and … Yes, many of us are still holding vigil. May it be mindful. Dedicated to Dawn Dianne Wood, my mother and wise friend, for whom I am still holding vigil. Holding Vigil by Alison Luterman My cousin asks if I can describe this moment, the heaviness of it, like sitting outside the operating room while someone you love is in surgery and you’re on those awful plastic chairs eating flaming Doritos from the vending machine which is the only thing that seems appealing to you, dinner-wise, waiting for the moment when the doctor will come out in her scrubs and face-mask, which she’ll pull down to tell you whether your beloved will live or not. That’s how it feels as the hours tick by, and everyone I care about is texting me with the same cold lump of dread in their throat asking if I’m okay, telling me how scared they are. I suppose in that way this is a moment of unity, the fact that we are all waiting in the same hospital corridor, for the same patient, who is on life support, and we’re asking each other, Will he wake up? Will she be herself? And we’re taking turns holding vigil, as families do, and bringing each other coffee from the cafeteria, and some of us think she’s gonna make it while others are already planning what they’ll wear to the funeral, which is also what happens at times like these, and I tell my cousin I don’t think I can describe this moment, heavier than plutonium, but on the other hand, in the grand scheme of things, I mean the whole sweep of human history, a soap bubble, because empires are always rising and falling, and whole civilizations die, they do, they get wiped out, this happens all the time, it’s just a shock when it happens to your civilization, your country, when it’s someone from your family on the respirator, and I don’t ask her how she’s sleeping, or what she thinks about when she wakes at three in the morning, cause she’s got two daughters, and that’s the thing, it’s not just us older people, forget about us, we had our day and we burned right through it, gasoline, fast food, cheap clothing, but right now I’m talking about the babies, and not just the human ones, but also the turtles and owls and white tigers, the Redwoods, the ozone layer, the icebergs for the love of God—every single blessed being on the face of this earth is holding its breath in this moment, and if you’re asking, can I describe that, Cousin, then I’ve gotta say no, no one could describe it we all just have to live through it, holding each other’s hands.
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 Daniel G. Weidner, LMHP
Mindfulness is a practice. Meditation is a critically important aspect of the practice of Mindfulness. When looking at Meditation from a macro perspective there are two integral parts: (1) the actual practice of sitting in Meditation, and (2) the practice of using the calming (Shamatha) and insights (Vipassana) gained through the sitting practice to manage your mind in daily life. Concentration is one of the first things that we learn as we begin a Meditation practice. Concentration (Samadhi) is part of what the Buddhist’s refer to as “The Noble Eightfold Path”. Concentration is facilitated in Meditation through focus on a specific object – typically the breath. Concentration in Mediation differs from the form of concentration that we employ when we study or focus on completion of a complex task. Concentration is not a method for running away from yourself or suppressing. We concentrate to make ourselves deeply present. When you are deeply concentrated you are absorbed in the moment, fully present, you become the moment. Thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations arise and pass away like clouds in the sky. During Meditation we begin to observe our discursive thoughts - thoughts from the past, thoughts of the future. As we practice we become progressively familiar with our thinking mind. We begin to observe what Jack Kornfield refers to a “frequent visitors”, or thoughts that appear with some regularity. We learn to note and name these frequent visitors. Through this process we learn to recognize them and, importantly, we learn to let them go and return to our object of concentration and the present moment. One of the first things that we realize through this process is that we begin to relax. This is known as Shamatha. Shamatha simply means stopping-calming-resting-healing. Shamatha in Meditation then helps us open to insight (Vipassana). Vipassana, at a basic level, is seen as looking deeply. Through this process we begin to peel back the layers of our thinking and learn to directly face whatever is before us at the moment. As we work with Shamatha and Vipassana we become increasingly familiar with our thinking mind and the many emotions/feelings that may be swirling around with our thoughts. We also develop the skill of “letting go”. In Meditation letting go is the act of retuning to our focus of concentration and to the present moment. When we have a daily and consistent Meditation practice our insights lead to a deeper understanding of the thinking mind. Simply put, we get to know the person with whom we spend every day of our life. This leads us to the second integral part of the practice of Meditation: applying the insight (lessons learned) to our daily life. We learn to understand and manage our thinking mind as we move through our lives. This begins with recognition. We learn to recognize thoughts and commensurate emotions/feelings as they appear in our mind. Through recognition we learn to accept those thoughts as thoughts and see that they are impermanent and pass away like clouds in the sky. We learn to let go and to not get caught up in thoughts from the past or future and to return ourselves to the present moment – which is the only moment that we ever have. Recognition and acceptance also provide us with an opportunity to deal with thoughts and feelings that may require further attention. The ability to recognize and accept our thoughts and feelings leads to greater calmness and equanimity in our daily lives. This then leads to a greater understanding of our thinking mind and enables us to return to the present moment in our daily lives. Stability develops over time with our practice. The vicissitudes of our lives begin to level off and we find that we experience progressively smaller swings in our moods and feelings. This leads to greater happiness and contentment with our life as it is.  Hillary Rubesin, PhD, LIMHP, REAT
“The opposite of war isn’t peace. It’s creation.” This Jonathan Larson quote, from his hit Broadway musical, RENT, has been my email tagline since college. I honestly don’t think about it much... even though it has been at the bottom of every single message I’ve sent for the last twenty years. Around the time I added this tagline, I remember speaking with my then 5-year-old cousin, Lila, about her day at summer camp. She reported excitedly, “I made art!” I responded with a smile and a question, “What is art?” She looked at me like this was the silliest question in the world, and replied, “It’s whatever you make!” I’m going to be honest: In the current times, I’ve struggled, really struggled, to find my creativity. I have often felt pangs of guilt and hypocrisy as I’ve encouraged my clients to create as an active response to the horrors of the world. To combat this guilt and to help “get my groove back,” I recently signed up for songwriting lessons with a local musician. At our first meeting, we played around with various chord progressions on both guitar and piano, and he challenged me to write 16 different “parts” (think four or more bars of music) in the key of C as my weekly homework. I immediately responded, “Okay... but don’t expect too much!” I heard my cousin Lila’s voice come through him: “Whatever you come up with will be great!” Art is whatever you make. So I did it. I came up with random combinations of C’s, D minors, E minors, and so on... and, the best part was, I didn’t judge myself (even when I struggled to remember what the heck a diminished chord is!) And, as I could have predicted, the simple act of creation helped me feel better. So many psychological models and theories related to trauma and grief revolve around action: Posttraumatic Growth, Adversity-Activated Development; the Adaptation and Development After Persecution and Trauma model. The crux of these theories/models is that taking action directly pushes against the immobilization often triggered by trauma. One of the many incredible things about the arts is that they are inherently active. In order to create, to write, to dance, to drum, to strum, to paint, to act, to take a photograph, you must move. You must activate something inside yourself. The opposite of war isn’t peace. It’s creation. Art is whatever you make. I hope you make something today.  Marilyn Erickson, APRN
One of my daughter’s many jobs is to care for a 99-year-old woman. She desperately desires that this woman continue to live with as much strength and good mental health as possible. She also sees her own mother living a long life and wants her to be as physically fit as possible. She tells me how important it is to preserve muscle through exercise that focuses on strength and endurance-building and believes that exercise is the most important practice for longevity and quality of life. So, in this article, as much as to give myself a path forward to a regular exercise routine and one specific to building strength and endurance, I am offering you, the reader, encouragement to do the same. And while exercise is important in all stages of life, it is just as critical and, in fact, essential, for individuals in mid-life and later life. We are not too old to start or to continue to change our lifestyle practices! First, think about what kind of movement you enjoy doing. Something that measures up to cardio-type exercise. Examples include running, cycling, swimming, dancing, rowing, and boxing and many more options. There are studies that show that cardio or aerobic training can help reduce the fat that accumulates as our hormones change with transitions to different stages of our development. Additionally, there is a greater benefit when you do both cardio and resistance training. Resistance training includes lifting weights and completing simple functional movements using your own body weight, like push-ups. Resistance training is one of the most impactful things you can do for yourself because the focus is on your muscle power. Muscle power is the ability to generate force quickly. It is critical for helping us perform better when playing sports or exercising in any setting. However, it also determines how well we do activities of daily living like climbing stairs, getting out of a chair, and protecting ourselves against falls. Around age 50, muscle strength (the ability to exert force or lift heavy objects) declines by about 3% per year. Muscle mass decreases by about 1% per year. But it is not inevitable that we lose muscle as we get older. It does take effort and commitment to ourselves, however. As you can see by the percentages above, muscle power declines more rapidly than muscle strength as we get older. So what can we do? Examples of power training exercises can include:
Physical activity affects mental health positively. Consistent, regular physical activity has the potential to help with sleep difficulties, depression and anxiety. I am a believer in having a body that is as healthy and as strong as possible will also give us a boost toward better mental health. So there is no time like the present to start some kind of program that works for you to start building endurance and muscle power. It is never too late to start! And you can start slow and small; change one thing at a time. Resources: Haver, Mary Claire. The New Menopause. 2024. Mahindru, et al. “Role of Physical Health and Well-being: A Review”, Cureus, 2023. Patrick, Rhonda. Found My Fitness website, 2025 document By Pamela Mueggenberg LIMHP
“Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own.” ― Bruce Lee As I write this, I am peering across a chasm of government transition. For me, right now, it is January 5th. I am writing this to you with bread baking in the oven, the weather is bitingly cold, and Biden is still president. For you, right now, things are different. Regardless of your political affiliation, for you these few weeks have been (if reality remains consistent) a lot. When forces outside of our control whirl around us, kicking up pain and fear and anger, it can serve us well to think about safety. What can we do to facilitate our own safety, the safety of those we care about, the safety of our community? First things first. How do we experience safety? Is it keeping things the same? Despite our super-powered monkey brains hating change, we can admit that maintaining the status quo is not safety. Is it keeping threats away? Counter-intuitively, not really. Once we begin identifying what could hurt us, we realize everything could hurt us eventually, and that doesn’t end well. I believe that safety is not the absence of threat, but rather the presence of connection. We cannot through force of will pause the rhythm of the universe, but we can dance with it. But what does that look like? I have a list.
Gather your loved ones close, your own heart closer, and know: we are all connected. We can take care of each other. Love is always here.  Hillary Rubesin, PhD, LIMHP, REAT
Over Thanksgiving, I was lucky enough to fly to New York City to see Hadestown, a modern-day musical retelling of the tragedy of Orpheus and Euridice. Admittedly, I had never heard the music before the curtains opened. To say I was blown away would be an understatement. To say I cried for the majority of the second half would be the truth. To say that watching this show three weeks after the presidential election was both gut wrenching and inspiring... well, that’s the point of this article! The final lines of the show hit me hard: “It's a sad song... We keep singing even so.” As an expressive arts therapist, I use the arts to help my clients express all emotions, many of them painful. There is something deeply grounding knowing that sad songs have most likely been sung since the dawn of humanity. Artistic expression is not only an act of healing. Artistic expression is an act of resistance. One of my teenage clients (and his mother) gave me consent to share a poem and drawing he created a few days after the election. I’d invite you to take some time to reflect on his words and imagery. As he writes so eloquently below, “...the world is not ending / It has simply begun to begin / To sprout, to grow, to flower again.” Untitled I am skin over fat Over muscle over bone Over atoms over molecules And much more, I suppose So, tell me, which part do you hate? Which part do you loathe? Which part of me deserves all the pain you impose? Is it my heart which longs to be free? My spirit, my lungs, my mind, all of me? Which part makes me not human to you? Which part makes you do all that you do? Or is it simply the fact that it’s there? The fact that it is enough to scare? Enough for your logic to be far enough impaired? And I have done nothing Nothing I have done Should put me on the end of the firing gun With my hands high in the sky Please, before you end it, at least let me try To have a future before you stamp it out To develop a life that I might defend I stand by my body until the very end And that I might Put up enough of a fight To outlive you and make it alright So, with my body, or all that is left I listen to the drum banging in my chest And I push, harder than you ever could Cause evil pales to the power of good So one day I’ll dance on your grave I’ll uproot all the poisoned plants that you made So for now we go on to simply just go We keep going and going and the next thing you know We’ll be there, there where we’re free Where you no longer have power over me So the world is not ending It has simply begun to begin To sprout, to grow, to flower again There’s no telling what we might make So please, for tomorrow, live through today  By CML Practitioners
Each year, as the wheel turns, the practitioners at CML take a moment to reflect on the coming year and a choose a word that might be a source of intention or focus for the months ahead. Here are our choices for 2025. “Please” – Hillary Admittedly, I struggled to come up with a “Guiding Word” for the year ahead. I have been feeling a bit untethered since the election, without a guidepost to direct me towards my future dreams/intentions. I decided to turn to the primary being connecting me to the present moment—my two year old. “Max,” I asked, as he dove into a bowl of macaroni and cheese, “What is your favorite word?” “PLEASE!” he shouted, a mouth full of yellow. Sure, he was most likely confusing his “favorite word” with “the magic word,” but I decided to go with it. Thanks for acting as a guide, Max. Please take care of your body so that you can be as strong as possible this year, and in the four years ahead; Please take care of your mind—keep reading for growth and for pleasure; Please take care of your soul—sing from your gut, play your grandfather’s piano, pick up your paintbrush again, dust off your guitar, write a poem for a friend that you haven’t spoken to in a while; Please connect with your community—remind yourself of all the good people in your orbit, help advocate for human rights. Do not disengage. Do not lose hope or heart. PLEASE. “Immensity” – Laura Inspired by the poem “Big” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, which found me on my birthday. This is, perhaps, the year to learn to be big. Spruce tree big. Cliffside big. Big as mesa, as mountain lake. Big as in cosmos, as in love. Being small has never served me—constricting, contorting, trying to fit into a room, into shoes, into a name. Let this be the year to escape all those little rules with those little shoulds, all those little cages with their little locks. Time to make of myself a key, time to lean into immensity. Time to supersize communion, time to grow beyond self. Time to open, to unwall, to do as the universe does, accelerating as it expands, not rushing toward something else, but changing the scale of space itself. This is the year to be big “Nimble” – Louisa Nothing has become clearer to me recently than how much the rules of the world seem to be in flux as we navigate yet another transitional stage in the human story. In this liminal time, as the old ways die but before new ones are born, it feels important to me to stay flexible and question any attachment, especially to expectation or outcome. I am using the coming year to “lighten the load” by releasing old beliefs that no longer serve, discarding projects that no longer feel vibrant, and ridding my home of unnecessary clutter. I want to feel as limber and pliable as possible so I can be responsive at a time when it feels that disruption, chaos, and the unexpected reign. “Community” – Marilyn Listen, learn, and implement trusted lived experiences. Be resourceful in finding trusted sources of information in this age of misinformation. It may take some digging, experimenting, and courage in connecting with new pathways. Recognizing community knowledge through intentional, authentic partnership and meaningful shifting of power to community can be a form of healing, including personal healing as well as healing of our families, institutions, and the greater national and global societies we are a part of. Never forget that we are stronger together than we are when we are divided. “Connection” – Pamela Connection is one of my most primary organizing principles. I live a life designed to facilitate and celebrate connection - and when faced with bad news or stressful times, my first instinct is to gather all my loved ones close to me to weather out the storm, hunkered down together against whatever comes. This year, I am going to challenge myself. I would like to experience connection expansively - meet more people, find more alliances, learn more systems. Stretch my arms to hold more than just my own and become a part of something larger.  By Laura Crosby
Here I sit before a blank page, awaiting inspiration, the cursor blinking expectantly. Instead of wishing the words to come, I find myself admiring the white space. The emptiness seems complete, needing nothing from me. What is there to add that would improve this clean slate? It is its own poetry. In this openness there is a peace that stands in stark contrast to the noise and agitation that may come next. What words would comfort or serve any of us as much as simple peace and quiet? For me, loving-kindness and compassion are usually the best first answer when I wonder what’s called for in any given moment. So I will share a loving-kindness (metta) sutta that I am practicing with, an adaptation of common translations. Please take what serves you and let the rest go. Practicing so that I may be skilled in goodness and know the path of peace I nurture this heart, mind, and body to be sincerely Straightforward and gentle in speech, Humble and modest, Content and unbusy, Satisfied with simplicity and unencumbered by preferences. Peaceful and calm and wise and skillful. Let me not do the slightest thing that causes harm or wise reproach; Wishing all beings be safe and well, happy and free. May love and compassion for all living-kind, excluding none, arise from the depths of my heart. Whether frail or strong, Seen and unseen, Living near and far, Born and to-be-born -- May all be at ease. Let none deceive or despise another. Let none through anger or ill-will Wish harm upon another. Just as a mother would protect her child with her own life, may I, in that same spirit, cultivate boundless thoughts of loving kindness toward all beings. May kindness radiate over the entire world: Outwards and unbounded, Free from hatred and ill-will. In all states of heart-mind-body, May I be mindful, And rest in a sublime abiding of loving kindness. By not holding to fixed views, Seeing clearly, and Abandoning attachment, May I and all beings be free from suffering.  Pamela Mueggenberg LIMHP, MA Art Therapy Counseling
"You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club." – Jack London You may be surprised to find that I, your friendly neighborhood art therapist - the lady in ponderous frocks who refuses to throw out any drawing and will greet bunnies in the backyard - loves Stephen King. I particularly enjoy his more recent works. He’s mellowed with age but doesn’t let his newfound hope for the goodness of humanity deter him from creating some memorable villains doing gleefully awful things. Last year I read his autobiography/writing guide, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. The book is historically notable as the one he was working on when, taking his daily walk through the woods near his home, he was run over by a truck and almost died. Five weeks after a life flight, a collapsed lung he suffered in midair, emergency surgery, and several reconstructive surgeries with all sorts of pins and shims holding his bones together, King decided it was about time he start writing again. Five weeks! Tabitha, King’s wife, set up a modified writing space for him in the kitchen and set him to work. King writes: “When it was over, I was dripping with sweat and almost too exhausted to sit up straight in my wheelchair. The pain in my hip was just short of apocalyptic. And the first five hundred words were uniquely terrifying—it was as if I’d never written anything before in my life. I stepped from one word to the next like a very old man finding his way across a stream on a zigzag line of wet stones. There was no miraculous breakthrough that afternoon, unless it was the ordinary miracle that comes with any attempt to create something. All I know is that the words started coming a little faster after a while, then a little faster still. My hip still hurt, my back still hurt, my leg, too, but those hurts began to seem a little farther away. I’d got going; there was that much. After that, things could only get better.” The practice of creativity is, at its core, a battle against entropy. With our pain we will create, with our exhaustion we will find patterns, with our confusion we will put things and ideas and images together and then, when we’re done, there will be something new that has never before existed in the world. (Then we need to find a place to put it, but that’s a completely different article.). We need to go deep into ourselves and the world to access such beauty. Compare that, for just a moment, with the story of the Greek Muses. Inspiration is flown in from above to a deserving few. Gilded ladies would whisper in their ear and, delicate and subtle, the art would flow through them and land fully formed on the page. How do you relate to your own creativity? Do you believe it to be a finite resource that must be budgeted? Like a gift from above that must be worshipped. Or, like King, is it a practice that helps remind you who you are? In my experience, the more we create the more creative we become. It is work, one we must commit to and practice, and we will see just how we can make the world more beautiful.  By Daniel G. Weidner
“There are none so blind as those who will not see”. The origin of this quote is unknown to me. However, the relevance of this quote to the current political situation in our nation seems clear. There exists a significant number of Americans who will not see. They are locked in their silos and hold on to their confirmation bias with a white knuckled intensity. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines ignorance as: “the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, education, or awareness”. The definition of ignorance in the literature on Mindfulness suggests that it means to be misled, misguided, deluded, or asleep. It is important to understand that in Mindfulness ignorance is not considered to be a lack of knowledge, rather it is knowing the wrong things. Ignorance, at its most basic level, is a misunderstanding of reality. Dr. Mark Epstein refers to it as the “…concretization of experience”. Buddhist’s consider ignorance to be one of the “three poisons” (attachment, aversion, ignorance). The three poisons are considered to be the three main causes of suffering (also known as Dukkha - pervasive unsatisfactoriness). Ignorance is considered to be the root of the other two poisons. We find that our resentment and anger, and selfishness and ill-will are themselves only conditioned responses that are the result of ignorance. Ignorance can degenerate into a generalized feeling of numbness, and if it is allowed to continue one can begin to feel that there is no way out of it. When we pretend to ourselves that we do not see and feel the things that we do not want to see and feel, we gradually lose our ability to feel at all. And it is in this feeling that there is no way out which can lead some people to look for someone who can lead them out of these feelings. A demagogue, an authoritarian, can take clear advantage of ignorance and use it for their own purposes. It is important here to remember that ignorance causes suffering. Our empathy, understanding, and compassion for those who suffer from ignorance are essential. Anger and resentment in relation to ignorance only causes more suffering. No one wants to be told that they are ignorant. People sometimes imply that ignorance means that one is not smart. This is far from the truth. There are many intelligent people who suffer from ignorance. But having a discussion with someone regarding ignorance can be like walking through a minefield. Before one can deal with ignorance in the world one must first both recognize and accept their own ignorance. If you would like to reduce ignorance in the world, then perhaps it is best to begin with oneself. This is where the practice of Mindful Meditation can be helpful. Cessation of ignorance in Meditation does not mean the cessation of feelings and perceptions; it means the cessation of ignorance in our feelings and perceptions. In Meditation we can begin to look deeply into the true nature of our existence. We begin to recognize and accept our ignorance and the suffering that it creates for us and others. Through this process we can begin to lift ourselves out of our ignorance and find greater peace and happiness in our lives. This, in turn, makes the world a little less ignorant. Namaste. |
