Grillo Center Labyrinth

Grillo Center Labyrinth
Meander and Meet....designed by George Peters and Melanie Walker of Airworks For more information contact Susan at susan@well.com

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Saturday Morning Walkers - June 29, 2008

Hi everyone!

It has been a delightful weekend. I missed our Saturday morning walk that Jan led out in Niwot, but Rae was here for a short but sweet visit. She attempted to get here on Thursday, flying standby from Baltimore, but didn't actually get on a flight until Friday morning. So, while I was at work, Barb and Jan (thank you both so much!) picked her up at the airport and brought her home to Boulder. The main purpose of her visit was to go with me to an all-day Jack Kornfield workshop on Saturday. Jack Kornfield is a Buddhist meditation teacher and psychologist who we have both followed for many years. The day was amazing and so special to share with each other.

I'd like to start a new "department" on the blog - Quotations/Poetry/Inspirational Words of the Week - I'll probably add this to the end of future posts but to start things off, I will share a quote here from Jack Kornfield:
"When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world we lose connection with one another- and ourselves." - Jack Kornfield


A special request - Jexy's friend Sara is going to be bringing her little girl, Robin, home from the hospital in a couple of weeks. 3 year-old Robin is being treated for childhood leukemia at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Her progress has been good and they are looking forward to getting her back home. Sara is looking for help with planning meals for Robin that are actually high in protein and calorie-packed. They have been vegetarians for a very long time so this will be a major adjustment. She would like to have recipes, preferably using chicken, turkey or fish, that are easy to prepare and kid-friendly - please no red meat! She'd also like ideas for high-protein vegetarian dishes. If you have any ideas or suggestions, go ahead and send them to me and I will forward them to Sara. If you'd like to check out their blog, go to http://robinsinclair.tumblr.com/. It is really inspirational to follow - so go back in the archive to the very first post at the beginning of June.

Book Report:

I'd like to share Jack Kornfield with all of you through a couple of this books. One that I read several years ago is A Path With Heart - it was one of the first books on Buddhism that I read and what made it so special is that he is able to make Buddhist philosophy accessible to our very everyday lives . Although he has had quite a fascinating spiritual path, beginning as a monk in Southeast Asia, at his heart, he is down to earth man finding his way in the way in the world. He's the real deal, as we like to say.

Amazon.com
In undertaking a spiritual life, we must make certain that our path is connected with our heart, according to author and Buddhist monk Jack Kornfield. Since 1974 (long before it gained popularity in the 1990s), Kornfield has been teaching westerners how to integrate Eastern teaching into their daily lives. Through generous storytelling and unmitigated warmth, Kornfield offers this excellent guidebook on living with attentiveness, meditation, and full-tilt compassion.
Part of what makes this book so accessible is Kornfield's use of everyday metaphors to describe the elusive lessons of spiritual transformation. For example, he opens with "the one seat" lesson taught to him by his esteemed teacher. Literally it means sitting in the center of a room and not being swayed or moved by all the people and dramas happening around you. On a spiritual level it means sticking "with one practice and teacher among all of the possibilities," writes Kornfield; "inwardly it means having the determination to stick with that practice through whatever difficulties and doubts arise until you have come to true clarity and understanding." The same could be said for this "one book." Among all the spiritual self-help books, this is a classic worth sticking with and returning to--a highly approachable teacher that can only lead to greater clarity and understanding

I purchased his newest book yesterday, The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology. I can't wait to dig in.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Author, psychologist and pioneering Buddhist teacher Kornfield writes his best book yet (and his previous ones were pretty good). His newest uses the same sweet narrative voice, provides convincing and illustrative anecdotes and stories, and reaches into world traditions and literature as well as contemporary scientific research. This book offers a systematic and well-organized view of Buddhist psychology, complete with occasional diagrams. Concepts and practices are placed in a framework that explains and connects them. It's all done with an eye toward application; most chapters end with exercises. Kornfield has been practicing Buddhism for close to 40 years, a lasting discipline that has produced this masterful book and a seasoned view of life that acknowledges a lot of oopses. As a mediator and psychologist, he has also witnessed some serious angst, including his own, and draws on it for illustrative power. Not everything here is new, least of all the title, but then the Buddha isn't either. The best is left for last: joy you can seek for yourself and others. Just keep your meditative seat, and this book by your bed. Kornfield comes across as the therapist you wish you'd had.

Rae left me a book that she read and enjoyed while sitting in the Baltimore airport all day on Thursday. It looks good to me.
In The Woods by Irish Tana French

From Publishers Weekly
Irish author French expertly walks the line between police procedural and psychological thriller in her debut. When Katy Devlin, a 12-year-old girl from Knocknaree, a Dublin suburb, is found murdered at a local archeological dig, Det. Rob Ryan and his partner, Cassie Maddox, must probe deep into the victim's troubled family history. There are chilling similarities between the Devlin murder and the disappearance 20 years before of two children from the same neighborhood who were Ryan's best friends. Only Maddox knows Ryan was involved in the 1984 case. The plot climaxes with a taut interrogation by Maddox of a potential suspect, and the reader is floored by the eventual identity and motives of the killer. A distracting political subplot involves a pending motorway in Knocknaree, but Ryan and Maddox are empathetic and flawed heroes, whose partnership and friendship elevate the narrative beyond a gory tale of murdered children and repressed childhood trauma.

Website of the Week: www.wikiHow.com - the how-to-manual you can edit.

Podcast of the Week: http://www.oprah.com/xm/ane/ane_main.jhtml A New Earth After-Show featuring Elizabeth Lesser of the Omega Institute. If you haven't heard Elizabeth she is a wonderful complement to the work being done by Eckhard Tolle. Lesser is one of the co-founders of The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. She has written The New American Spirituality (recently re-released as The Seeker's Guide) and more recently, Broken Open, her memoir, which gives insight into how she has navigated through this life.

Vocabulary Word of the Week - Wiki

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.[1][2] Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia, Wikipedia, is one of the best-known wikis.[2] Wikis are used in business to provide intranets and Knowledge Management systems. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work".[3]
"Wiki Wiki" (/wiːkiː wiːkiː/) is a reduplication of "wiki", a Hawaiian word for "fast". It has been suggested that "wiki" means "What I Know Is". However, this is a backronym

Cooking and Dining Report:

Just one new recipe and one worth repeating:

Linguine with Zucchini, Pancetta & Parmigiano from Fine Cooking - very interesting combination of flavors - we really liked it! http://www.taunton.com/finecooking/recipes/quick-italian-pasta-pancetta-zucchini.aspx?ac=fp

Cioppino from Giada de Laurentiis - this Italian seafood stew is a great meal for winter or summer - I made it last Christmas and we had it this past Friday night siting out on our deck http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_32499,00.html

That's it for now - have a great week ahead - enjoy the upcoming 4th of July weekend! We're excited about Libby and David's arrival on Thursday evening!

Love,

Susan

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