All my Body-Mind Centering friends are departed save a handful, nestling in our dorms one last night.  I am filled with appreciation, admiration, delight.  Here is an offering, inspired by Clover Catskill’s beautiful performance today.

Thank you friends!

Mindful

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

~ Mary Oliver

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Wizard of the Hoh by Paul Marcllini

This image feels like the rich slough of sensory experiencing material I have been steeping in all week at the Body-Mind Centering Association conference at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.  This is only my second BMCA conference, and I am hooked. It is an immersion in bodily wisdom and mindfulness via the visionary work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and those who have studied, appreciated and expanded her teachings.  The collegial breadth and depth here is stunning, delicious, inspiring.  Feeling met, held, welcomed and taught by this community is a most precious gift.

My post-conference body carries the many traces of shared dances, sounds and questions.  It also carries a hunger to deepen those inquiries, to nourish these friendships, old and new.  As we ready ourselves to leave, I feel a slight panic and a more than slight sadness.  I want these connections, I want to be included here.  I want more experience of these lovely faces, bodies, minds and the tremendous integrity and devotion they embody.

Thank you one and all!

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