Dear Common Ground Friends,
Thanksgiving arrives each year as a complicated invitation to grow our capacity to be right in the middle of life on life's terms. We may gather with our friends and family to express gratitude, to share meals and to rest and enjoy each other's company. Our commitment to beautiful heart qualities of generosity and connection can feel natural and accessible at this time of year, and are a real gift to ourselves and each other. Yet this holiday also carries a history of colonization, broken treaties, and unfathomable harm to Indigenous communities that reverberates today. The Buddha taught that practice includes meeting life fully, opening to the heartbreaking realities of greed, hatred, and delusion and the beautiful expressions of heart/mind in and around us. We are invited to sincerely appreciate what is sustaining and supportive and to honor the grief and injustice woven into this day. Zen Buddhist Priest Shohaku Okumura said that emptiness "is soft and flexible like a plant that tries to go around a big rock and continues to grow." Perhaps this is what we're called to do with Thanksgiving—not to pretend the rock of difficult history isn't there, but to grow around it with flexibility and honesty, inviting our many expressions of practice to be shaped by reality rather than a rigid and painful denial of the way it is.
I’ve been touched by all the many expressions of gratitude this week, for the earth and good food, for friends and family, and for another year of practice while also making space for the losses and grief that make Thanksgiving painful for so many. Joy and suffering are not separate realities but interconnected expressions of our shared humanity. Can we allow our hearts to be touched by both the sweetness of what we have access to and the reality of how it came to be, allowing that complexity to inform our practice and our actions going forward with humility, awareness, and commitment.
There is so much to be grateful for including the Common Ground community and the way good intention and good action keeps flowing through us in such diverse ways. If you’re looking for ways to deepen practice in the months ahead consider the December Community Practice Intensive that I will be leading starting Monday, or one of many other offerings. There is still space in our Year End Retreat at the City Center, our the additional residential retreats listed below at our retreat center, just 80 miles east of the Twin Cities. I hope to practice with you in person or virtually in the days ahead.
Peace,
Shelly Graf
Co-Guiding Teacher