The YUZ Retreat

This weekend, twenty or so of us from Young Urban Zen spent the weekend at Green Gulch.  Arriving by bike with a few other people, I felt right at home, as I have in the past.  As others went off on hikes, I decided to settle in with some coffee in the library, where I have spent so many evenings as a guest student (or surreptitiously farm-crashing).  As in the past, simply being there allowed me to more fully feel myself - and to more fully feel myself means to feel myself as practitioner, to open up to myself as a practitioner.

Over the weekend, I felt overjoyed watching everyone connecting with everyone else - more than at any other time in YUZ's short history, I felt that long-lasting, meaningful relationships were being built.  For as long as I can remember, I've desired spiritual community - long before I began considering myself as a spiritual person.  I desired it long before I had the knowledge to label it.  I don't recall desiring spiritual community as a child, but I was certainly desiring it, in some vague way, as I entered adolescence.  As a teacher I'm increasingly realizing how spiritual children and teenagers are - but I won't go off on that tangent now, aside from to say that they want to learn how to support others, want to learn about themselves, want to pursue deeply meaningful activities.  This is what the sangha helps us do.  Throughout my adult life, I've been fascinated by how difficult it can be to satisfy the basic human desire of sangha.  It can be exceptionally difficult to find and manifest a community that feels truly supportive of our entire being, a community that we can sincerely agree with and desire to give our energy to.   

So, just a short post to say I feel blessed to be a part of Young Urban Zen and the entire Zen community.  I heard many people expressing more or less the same thing over the course of the weekend, and expressing how wonderful it was for us all to be deepening our connections and our paths.  Shundo took some beautiful pictures, some of which can be seen here - I know there are many more out there, and a few people suggested that we gather all of those up in one place and create a little YUZ book.  I'll add one post-Green Gulch photo - a few of us checked out Cello Bazaar (hosted by Hannah) afterwards and had a truly lovely time - hope more YUZers and Zen folk join in for that next month. 

Ryan, Vanessa, Maggie, and Hannah, with some lovely musicians in the backdrop - Tova was also there earlier in the night.

 Oh, one last thing - you who "forgot" the brownies are well loved, with or without them.  (But what a delight to find an Oreo in mine!  I'm not sure why that brought me such childlike joy, but it did :)