*From Kripalu on line – which I joined as a member at the start of January because – well, because I knew that 2025 was going to be a toughie, to say the least, and that I would need all the help I could get to get through. My grandmother started her day reading from the Common Book of Prayer, but I prefer a different – yet equally valid and necessary – daily source of wisdom. I’m also trying to meditate every morning, which is going about how I thought it would go: choppy. Sitting still, focusing my busy brain on breath and nothing else: a perennial challenge. From the wise and good folks at Kripalu, where I go several times a year to remind myself to breathe, slow down, and take three plus hours of yoga daily, all to try to remain flexible and open (or, try to!!).
**Plus, homicide is tricky.
“Letting ourselves be angry is the first step to healing the hurt that is beneath the anger. If we don’t wrestle with anger, we will never get to the heartbreak. And if we don’t get to the heartbreak, we don’t get to the healing. Our anger arises over our pain and is only pointing back to our pain. To hold space for our pain is a way that we begin to take care of our pain. Taking care of our pain softens our hurt as we do the work of empathizing with ourselves. Empathizing with ourselves makes it easier to empathize with others around us. This empathy is at the root of the love and compassion that will begin to disrupt the systems that create harm.”- Lama Rod Owens, Kripalu
Love doesn’t always come packaged in the neat and predictable ways you might expect. Sometimes it comes in the form of anger or rage; wild like fire, feral, and burning everything up. We must allow anger into our experience. What if we could meet, face, and welcome anger in a way that acknowledges and honors its power as a force for personal, social, and spiritual change and transformation? Anger then becomes a tool, vehicle, and pathway of liberation for oneself, each other, and the world. A healthy fire that lights the way forward in radical change. When we allow ourselves to feel what we feel, including anger and pain, we gain the potential to connect to a fierce and compassionate kind of Love that wakes us up and cracks through systems of oppression and violence.