Finding Home

"Uses of Yoga Attire: Panglaba ( Laundry), Pang-ilis ug Ponda (Replacing Sofa Covers) ug Uban Pa (Many More)..."      I jokingly post in my social media stories how I do house chores in a Yoga tank and pants. Some viewers get a kick out of it with the "haha" sign. Some press that thumbs up sign. Some don't care. All is good. Everybody moves on to the next person's story.  Joking aside, for these past few weeks my practice in Yoga and Meditation has been here, there and everywhere. Unfortunately, most of the times it is a combination of all three.  The hours are occupied with home chores-- laundry, dishes, changing sheets, changing curtains making the bed, sweeping floors, wiping windows, more chores and attending to my boys. Transitioning into this kind of normal since the home quarantine started has been a slow process in that I am still trying to find balance in establishing a personal time and housekeeping. Some days, I am able to follow a consistent

March 1, 2020 "Kinsa imong gibisita Mam?" the Grab driver asks. Whose grave did you visit? "Akong Papa." "Unsa na ka dugay?" "20 years." "Aw dugay naman diay." So it has been quite a while. He said it in a manner that somehow tells me it is no longer as painful as it must have been before.   The driver’s words stung. I wanted to him to take back his comment but remained silent as he proceeded to tell a story of how his own father had died many years ago as well. I responded politely and listened to him but my mind drifted elsewhere.   I wept at my father's grave. "I forgive you. I miss you.   I still see your face, still hear your voice." One continuous stream of thought flowed from the core of my being spilling out of my eyes.  I hear the Grab driver’s own storytelling as if from a distance. Meanwhile I am unhinged by the barrage of emotions. A song plays from the car’s radio," Mutya ka Bale

There is a window of quietude before my boys wake and I ease into the day relishing and digesting words of comfort from favorite authors accompanied with a warm cup of coffee. Bird calls ring into the air. A variety of birds have found home in our Avocado trees. As I read and sip, outside a vendor’s holler selling Lemonsito in a sing-song voice breaks through the silence. It sounds pleasant and brings a beautiful nostalgia of sorts taking me into a time in the past where one of the common ways to earn a living entailed a captivating song to attract the sale of whatever is intended to be sold. A few days ago the song was "Isdaaaa, lab-as!”   Today, it was, “Lemoooon, lemonsitoooo!" The first syllables a higher pitch than the second and a prolonged articulation on the last ones. These days framed by the COVID-19 pandemic can only be described as uncertain and unreal but bring with it “a harvest of presence”, as David Whyte describes beauty. A mindful attention to the ordi

"39 years of hair", I thought as the husband went through my scalp with the satisfyingly buzzing sound of the clipper with clumps of hair falling all over my body and onto the floor.  "I am letting go of all that." That which has been the quiet witness to everything and anything that has come to pass in my life-- Childhood. Favorite stories. Stories of becoming, unbecoming. Places of beautiful memories. First love. First broken heart. Many firsts. Seconds too and multiples of many more things unspeakable and worthy of praise. Everything is a myth until it is manifested in the body, my teacher Arianne said. We inherit karma, various spiritual traditions have reiterated.  This path to healing has many faces and countless detours. Surrender is a word that I am presently learning to live by. What happens when I acknowledge, be with and honor that which is manifested in the body? What happens when I allow karmic inheritance to pass through without resistance?

Come to the temple of your longing This place of honoring will embrace you Even as it will break your heart This place of grace and forgiving will give you back your anger That for so long you have denied This place of gentle confrontation will compel you to sit with your darkness, meet every ache with tenderness This place of delicate annihilation will unravel your layers revealing your truth no shame or apology, only what is This place of revelation will ground you This is who you are, Right here, right now This place of all there is Of palm trees and fallen leaves In the eternity of wind and waves Soar here, float here, land here Come into this place of need, Of seeking then finding Come into this now open body Into the now expansive mind, into the temple of your now resolute heart. Durga Temple November 22, 2019 I am grateful for all my teachers at Lotus Shores. Every stay has been healing. Every time I heal a bit more. Each time I become

I turn 39 in a month and yet I still remember very clearly the day my classmates and I knew for sure we were going to graduate from high school. Our senior year was nothing short of challenging, rigorous and heartbreaking. But that is a whole other story.   Presently at 38, my youngest son Morgan, who is 11, is bigger than me. Garret now sleeps in his own bed. Although time is of a different form in our life, there are poignant points of contact between the "normal" world and ours. As my boys and I walk around our school for their daily exercise, the comings and goings of our students their age are accompanied by wistful thoughts that I’ve come to embrace. “Garret would have been Grade 8 now. Morgan in 5 th grade.” I find myself going back and forth in time. During these moments of poignancy, questions come one after another. "Where am I in all this?" "Who am I?" "What is my purpose in this life?" My meditation practice certainly

Our teacher leads us into the three cycles representing the full moon and lunar eclipse. It is a dance, one fluid sequence with seemingly no beginning and no end. And in the middle I am brought to a place where I am 8 years old in a ballet studio. It is my first ballet class. My father is there and stays through the entire class. I walk up to him right after and ask him how I was. He says, "Gusto kaayo ka ug naay mutudlo nimo." "You seem to want the teacher to always guide you,"he says in halting Bisaya and English. At the time I understood it to be that I wasn't a born dancer like the others who could very well flex their bodies on their own. But he said it in a way that was gentle, kind and compassionate, the only way he knew how to be with me. Even as I recall the memory now, I am brought to a kind of sensation of falling on a pillow to cushion from gravity, from the otherwise glaring reality. As our teacher leads us further into the sequence, I find mys