Weekly Email 11-23-22

Dear Common Ground Friends,

As hard as it seems at times the Buddha reminds us that it is possible to accept things as they are. This includes every possible experience that emerges within us, and in the contexts of our relationships and our social world. When we’re able to accept life on life’s terms even in brief moments, our hearts open to a simple joy, the joy of not blaming, not clinging, not resisting. Acceptance becomes trustworthy and little by little, acceptance begins to shape and guide our lives. Wherever our lives take us over the next week, may we all experience the simple joy and contentedness of acceptance. May we tune into the ways our life activities become skillfully shaped and animated by the spacious heart, remembering that we don’t have to be perfect to experience this simple joy. We can start right now. Is it possible to accept this, whatever it is and however we feel it, even the pain, even the beauty, even the unexpected?

I’ll leave you with a sweet dharma inspired poem by long time Common Ground teacher and friend, Alice Vollmar in her new book of poetry: Stopping! Looking!

SNOW SURPRISE
Ten inches piled high –
Filling the old basketball hoop, Bending pine branches – Came yesterday.
In the mantle vase
Fall mums and cattails,
A bit faded,
Try to be the season just past.
In our naivete,
We, of course, all do.

Warm Wishes,

Shelly Graf
Co-Guiding Teacher

Weekly Programs
To view our entire list of programs and to access Zoom links to participate in online programs, please visit the online calendar. 

Weekly Practice Groups

• Sunday mornings, 10:30-11:45am in-person and on Zoom with Mark Nunberg
  • Dec 4th with Jean Haley
• Sunday evenings, 7:00-8:30pm in-person with Mark Nunberg
  • Dec 4th with Shelly Graf
• Wednesday evenings, 7:30-9:00pm on Zoom with Shelly Graf

The Practice of Generosity

Continuing in the tradition of Buddhist monasteries in Southeast Asia, all programs at Common Ground are offered free of charge in the spirit of generosity. This offering is possible because of the generosity of people like you—from the Buddha on down to all the people in our community—who contribute their practice, time, and financial resources to support the continuation of the center.

To learn how to support the center and our teachers, visit this page. Let us know if you have any questions.

Current Volunteer Needs 
Please contact Robin Major at robin@commongroundmeditation.org if you are interested in any of these volunteer opportunities:

• Snowblowing and Shoveling: ‘Tis snow season! If you would like to help Ollie and Rob keep the sidewalks and parking lot clear, please contact Ollie at: ostocker1@gmail.com. Ollie and Rob will be happy to train you in with the snowblower if you have not used one before.
• YouTube Volunteer: We are looking for a volunteer to help our yoga teacher Nancy Boler upload livestream thumbnails to our YouTube page. This task is easy to learn and takes about 15 minutes every couple weeks.
• Adopt a Cleaning Task for the Common Ground building! Our meditation home is welcoming more traffic these days. If it would feel good for you to pick up a work task and give to the community in this way, please let Robin know a specific time you would like to come in and we can identify a weekly 15-45 minute cleaning task for you to do.
• Website Volunteer: We are hoping to re-do our website in the coming months. If you have experience building websites and are interested in helping with this, please write an email of interest to Robin.
• Plant Pots: We are looking for two large terracotta, ceramic, or nicely made resin pots for plants at the retreat center. The pots should be at least 15in in diameter.

Community News 

Community Potluck!
Our next Community Potluck will be on Sunday, December 18th from 12:00 – 1:30pm. If you’d like to help out during the event, you can sign up for a volunteer slot here.

Calendar Page Captchas
If you have been experiencing difficulty opening the calendar page, you are not alone! We are working to update our calendar page and hopefully will have it fixed soon. Accessing the calendar through Google Chrome, or another non-Safari platform, works best.

Weekly Tejaniya

The True Goal of Practice is to Understand
The true goal of pratice is
to understand things; happiness
then follows naturally.

 Thanks to The Daily Tejaniya for this quote

Alice Vollmar and Mary Guzowski-Lindbeck celebrating Alice’s poetry reading earlier this month