Teresa Rylander, the inspiration and co-planner and leader of Sunday's Gathering, writes the following about this week's Gathering: We will be talking about taking mindfulness practice off the cushion and bringing it into our day to day life (or more correctly, our moment to moment life). Jan Chozen Bays defines mindfulness as: "...deliberating paying full attention to what is happening around you and within you-in your body, heart, and mind-without criticism or judgment.
The key is deliberately choosing where you place your attention. For, if left unattended, the mind will run off to anyplace other than here and now. Its frequent haunts are: if only-ingin the past, trying to rewrite the script for a moment that no longer exists; or, what if-ing some future moment that may or may not come to pass. And, sometimes, it just goes plain goofy. Case in point: last week while on a walk, I started out by noticing the beauty around me, but, at some point, I noticed my mind had roamed off to Austin to expound on the ludicrous parking on Congress Avenue. Definitely not how I wanted to spend my precious walking moments.
Sunday, we will consider practicing choosing where we want to spend our "one wild and precious life" (Mary Oliver) rather than letting the gremlin of the unattended mind make the only moment of life we actually have-this moment-go unnoticed.
Wanting to share the gift and joy of spending a moment reading, our offering will be designated for The Adult Literacy Council of the Concho Valley. Following the service, we will share a potluck meal.
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