Oodles of Zoodles

We have a small, raised bed garden in our backyard. We’ve been planting it for the past several years,
and I’ve noticed that each growing season is a little bit different. Each season there are certain variables that determine growth potential. What is growing changes based on what plants are available at my local nursery, the weather, of course, and then there’s the effort I am willing to put into it. This year my garden is providing more zucchini than our family can possibly consume. I have been trying to spread the love, offering it to family, friends, and neighbors. If you show up at my doorstep this month, you just might leave with a zucchini! If you’ve ever grown zucchini, you know it literally seems to grow overnight. Seriously, zucchini could be the answer to world hunger. With all the growth this year, my garden demands daily attention.

 

I have made zucchini pizza, zucchini muffins, zucchini boats, and pasta with zucchini…

 

This zucchini boat did not go over well with the hubs.

My husband is not a fan of zucchini. But he does like cucumbers. Thankfully our cucumber crop is also thriving this season. We love to slice them up and dip them in some yummy hummus. We’ve also been juicing them. Cucumber juice with a little ginger and lime is super refreshing on a hot summer day. And also, super healthy.

 Cuke juice is super refreshing when it's hot out!

 

Since I tend to primarily look at life through more of a spiritual lens (and I am weird this way), I have been wondering what this means. I am curious about what wisdom my plentiful garden has to offer me this season. With so much zucchini and cucumber, I wonder what God is providing that I might need right now. According to my research, zucchini is chock full of vitamin A and folate. Its mild flavor makes it versatile and an ideal add-on to lots of dishes like eggs, pasta, and even smoothies. It lasts for quite a while in the fridge or freezer. That’s certainly a blessing, as I have been consumed with seminary studies and have had little time to think about much else.

 

Only we can determine what abundance is currently showing up. Every season is different. Every season of life is different based on what we have planted, how we have tended our garden, and of course, the weather. Where is the abundance? How can we ponder this more?

 

Enter into the Great Silence,

where you may hear the voice of the Beloved,

Who satisfies the hungry soul,

and quenches the thirsty with streams of Living Water                   

 ~~Psalm 107, From Nan Merrill's Psalms for Praying

 

Then there is this, also from Psalm 107:

 

If you are really wise, you’ll think this over—

    it’s time you appreciated God’s deep love.

~~Eugene Peterson’s The Message

 

I love that translation.

 

We are wise to spend more time reflecting on the abundance of God. Whether it’s zoodles and cucumber juice, a gorgeous sunrise, tea with a dear friend, a new grandbaby, a successful medical procedure, or fascinating scientific discoveries about the universe from the Webb telescope, the abundance is there. Where are you noticing abundance? Even if things seem really difficult right now for you, where are you experiencing new growth? According to the psalmist, it’s good…maybe healthy even, to ponder these things. 

 

Rather than the bazillion other distractions that are out there. 

 

God is great

God is good 

And we thank God for our food

 

By God’s hand we all are fed

Give us this day

Our daily bread

 

Remember that grace from your childhood? For many, this was a go-to grace. It is apparently also a hymn written by that famous person, anonymous. 

 

I took the liberty of making God’s gender neutral. You’re welcome. 

I think this sweet little grace pretty much sums up God’s love for us. 

 

God is good, our creator and sustainer and redeemer of everything that may seem negative in our lives. God is abundant in sometimes extremely surprising ways. And God loves us all – no exceptions. God loves every one of us, regardless of how plentiful or feebly our literal or metaphorical gardens are currently growing. God loves us and feeds us with what we currently need.

 

Our job is to pay attention. And to occasionally say thank you.

 

Blessings,

Connie

 

 

 

 

 

Connie Bowman is an actress, voice talent, yoga teacher, author, and host of the podcast Happy Healthy You! and now Seminarian Connie Bowman encourages all of us to find wholeness by following our bliss and living lives of health, happiness, and meaning. www.conniebowman.com

Webb Musings: Will We Kill the Messenger?

I read today about this South American saying: “To be human one must make room in one’s heart for the wonders of the universe.” This is a common thread among religions and indigenous cultures. 

We are, mostly, far as I know, human. How do we make room in our hearts (let alone our minds) for an appreciation of the wonders that are out there? 

Personally, I am a sucker for a sunrise or sunset. Geese flying in formation about do me in. But those are just examples of what my eyes can perceive. What about all the wondrous things we have not seen with our own eyes?
 

History exposes our reluctance, strike that - violent resistance, to new data that threatens to shake up the status quo. We have tended to kill the messenger. Will we accept information that comes from a sophisticated scientific instrument, albeit one that has been in the works for decades and developed together by humans from around the planet? (How much wonder is in that?) 

What of all that the Webb telescope will show us? Are our hearts prepared for that? How will that change our ideas about our cosmos, world, ourselves? While we’re pondering all of this, what of the wonders all around us, nearer to the ground? How will our hearts be changed by discoveries to come? Can we really prepare for that?

With no limits, what do you dream will be revealed by the Webb Telescope?

 Jesus said, “So, you believe because you’ve seen with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing.”

~~John 20:29 (From Eugene Peterson's The Message)

Here is a gentle yoga practice to help us center and gracefully reach up and turn our gazes skyward. 

May we see with clarity the truth of our past and future potential, and the beauty right in front of us.

Namaste,

Connie

You Live. You Learn.

You Live. You Learn. ~~Alanis Morrisette

My husband saw that Alanis Morrissette was coming to a concert venue near us and announced he was getting tickets. “She’s a beast,” he pronounced. Immediately I corrected him, “She’s spiritual,” I insisted.

I love that my husband appreciates strong, sensitive, talented women. But I wanted him to see it my way; that Alanis writes and performs from a deep knowing, a wisdom that comes from a higher source. He maintains that she is a sexy, strong, badass woman with an incredible voice and ability to write and translate into performance songs that relate to so much of our human condition. “She’s a beast.”

Do you think spiritual and "beast" or “badass” are mutually exclusive?

I'm not so sure.

During Covid, I went back to school to work on a Masters of Divinity, MDiv for short...after forty years. I graduated (with my husband) from Western Maryland College, now McDaniel, in 1981. In ’81 we typed our papers on manual typewriters. We used white-out if we made an error. We didn’t cut and paste, we rewrote. There was no spell check or Grammarly or applications for citations or bibliographies. It’s quite astounding, the technology that's available for learning these days.

One thing hasn’t changed. As the badass Alanis sings, we often learn best from our mistakes, our failures, our challenges.

For example, in my first semester, I took Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. That’s the Old Testament. You know, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, etc. The professor is tough. For our final project, we were to create a Bible Study based on what we had learned about the Hebrew Scriptures. Because I teach yoga and meditation, I and my study partner decided to turn the Bible Study into a retreat for the congregation. I wanted participants to appreciate the beauty of the psalms and the more healing passages from beautiful poetic books like Isaiah during a year when we could all use some peace. The Zoom retreat went well. I threw in some self-care tips and guided meditations and we enjoyed one another’s company in community as we mined the Hebrew Scriptures for wisdom during a strange and stressful Advent season.

At the end of it, I proudly turned in my paper that described my successful Bible Study. I was certain I would get an A. When it came time for my grade, my professor took points off. What? My professor is a badass too. He knows his Isaiah. This is what he wrote in response:

"I think the topic of exile is very pertinent during this time. It seems the book of Isaiah gave you the images and inspiration to build community and explore the topic of resiliency. 
I left wanting to see how you addressed the issue of punishment in the book of Isaiah and how your group would tackle this point that frames the theme of resilience. I did not see it in your narrative. I understand the liturgical season we are in, but your work keeps the boundaries of the tradition in the lectionary and does not offer your group an opportunity to discuss them in the theological framework of punishment and redemption. What to do with that framework during this season? How to struggle with the theme of exile and pandemic in the same framework?"

I recommend biting off more than you can chew. To anyone.

Did he mean to suggest that this pandemic was a punishment? Certainly not. Where is our redemption after all of this?

I let it go and moved on to Intro to the New Testament for the Spring semester. You know, Matthew Mark, Luke, John, etc. It was in the study of the Gospel of Luke that I came upon a passage where Jesus was reading from the Prophet Isaiah. Here is the passage from Luke 4:18-19:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

    because he has anointed me

        to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind

        to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Insert Massive “Aha” moment…

Jesus is reading to the people from Isaiah 61. Here’s more of the original passage:

“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

    because the Lord has anointed me;

he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, 

to bind the brokenhearted 

to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, 

and the day of vengeance of our God; 

to comfort all who mourn"

   

Jesus changed it up! Five or six hundred years later, he brought out the ancient scroll to comfort his followers. He used familiar words. He didn't want to stress them out, even more, just to offer a different way of hearing. He didn’t tell the suffering people under Roman occupation that God’s vengeance was at hand. Isaiah 61 was written to a people in exile. Their land had been taken from them. Jesus was speaking to a people whose freedoms had also been taken away. Sound familiar at all? He just couldn’t bring himself to talk about a God of vengeance. I get it. Thank you, Jesus! You get me.

Wait until the dust settles...

Here’s the thing, I wouldn’t have stumbled upon that passage with any significant appreciation had my professor not challenged me. (I still got an A in the class btw!)

That’s just one interpretation of many more. That's why we hear that the scriptures are living words. They apply to us at every stage of our lives, to each of us differently. You say Alanis is a badass. I say she’s spiritual. We're allowed to agree to disagree. It’s all good. It’s all God.

Yes, I am going back to school. But everyday living is learning. 

We just have to keep our eyes and ears and hearts open. 

I cannot wait to see Alanis in concert. Thanks for getting us tickets, honey.
I am grateful for this recent version of Jagged Little Pill...

Namaste,
Connie

Lighten

Hey Friends,

Just a quick post to catch up and offer a little light during troubling times. That's my plan and I'm sticking to it!

These days, it takes a conscious effort to stay flexible enough to roll with the many changes, strong enough to be resilient and light-hearted enough to take ourselves less seriously. This gentle practice was created for all of the above. Enjoy and pass it on if you found it useful.

For many people, the mending of relationships, given up for lost has been a satisfying outcome of our quarantine time. Some of us, have realized the fragility of life this past year and want to share our wisdom with loved ones while we can. 

Like 107-year-old Nonnie Bonita, who became a YouTube sensation on her 102nd birthday. As she blew out the candles, on her birthday cake, her dentures flew right out of her mouth and her hilarious response immediately went viral. If you haven’t seen the video, you must! This year Nonnie lived through her second pandemic. Nonnie has lots of good advice to share after her long, challenging life, like always look at the bright side and never, ever hold a grudge.

Stay poised in the light friends. This too shall pass. Many blessings to you and yours.

Namaste,
Connie

Intention Setting in Lent

 Intention setting is an important part of Lent. It’s the intention we make that initiates the GPS for our journey. When we plug in an address, we are presented with a route. We can mindfully travel toward our destination by following the directions we are given as we go. Sometimes we are met with an obstacle, a tree down across the road if you will. Thanks to updated technology our intelligent GPS system reroutes us. Therefore, paying attention is crucial, lest we miss a turn.

You will want to choose your intention with care and then pay close attention. If you give up chocolate because it is a distraction, then notice daily what arises as you gradually learn to do without. You could choose another intention, adding a contemplative practice, for example.

Deprivation is never God’s intention for our lives. Rather, it is lavish, unconditional love. Everything is there for the enhancement of our spiritual journey. 

Everything. 

Lent is not for the faint-hearted

Lent is not for the faint-hearted.
It demands that we, like Thomas,
put our hand into the side of the crucified Christ.

Lent is a journey towards the cross, a journey of enlightenment:
from wilderness to feast,
from desert to oasis.

It’s an attempt to identify with the powerless and the suffering in the world.

Lent is not tidy.
The days grow longer,*
the ground thaws, there’s mud and dirt everywhere and the windows need cleaning.

Lent is a journey.
So at the end of Lent
we should expect to find ourselves somewhere different from where we started.

Lent can be an opportunity
to explore what is the nature
of the promised Kingdom of God on earth that we long for;
a time to discern
how we are called to work for it.

No, Lent is not for the faint-hearted!

~~Kate McIlhagga

*‘Lent’ means lengthen.

💛With Love in Lent,

Connie

Yoga: Message in a Bottle

Yoga: Ahimsa

Yoga: House of a New Year

Waking Up Happy

These days waking up seems like a tall order, happiness aside. 

And yet I am strangely, surprisingly optimistic. 

Our culture is trying really hard to wake up. We are seeing more clearly the injustices that have been plaguing us for centuries all in the midst of a very real plague. For the first time in maybe forever many of us are getting still enough to see more clearly the subtle and often insidious ways our hearts have become hardened to truth, to beauty, to one another, and to ourselves.

It is high time for all of us to wake up. 

Let's be real, waking up can be hard to do. And downright painful, literally and metaphorically.


Here is a gentle practice to ground our day in inspiration and positivity. Here is a gentle practice to move our bodies, our temples of the divine, so that we can move in places where we may have been a little stuck. It's a practice that I like to do each and every morning. You are, of course, free to make this your own by tweaking it to meet your needs.


We have to wake up if we are to keep moving forward as a human family. We have to start somewhere. Best to start from the ground up. 


As we celebrate International Day of Yoga on the heels of Juneteenth, in harmonious concert with the Summer Solstice let us bathe in the light of this longest day. Let us move and breathe and pray together until our hearts begin to soften toward ourselves, one another and our precious planet. Let us move and breathe and pray and not stop until we are all free.


If the grace of seeing were ours this day, we would see the divine in every living soul. Grant us the grace seeing this day. 

Grant us the grace of seeing.

Namaste and Love,
Connie

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created. 
Under the orange
sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again
and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands
of summer lilies. 
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails
for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere. 
And if your spirit
carries within it
the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---
there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---
each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly, 
every morning, 
whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy, 
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

~~Mary Oliver

Connie Bowman is an actress, podcast host, yoga teacher, and author of several books, including There's an Elephant in My Bathtub, Super Socks and Back to Happy. Follow her on Instagram @conniebowmanactressauthoryogior visit www.conniebowman.com. Join her for yoga Tuesday evenings here.

Link to John Phillip Newells book Celtic Benediction: https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/3904/celtic-benediction.aspx

Best Laid Plans

"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry."

~~Robert Burns

Are you a man or a mouse? I am neither but I can relate to this quote by poet Robert Burns. My plan to meditate every morning and evening has gone awry, several times actually.

This video is part of my plan to bring meditation back into my life on a regular basis. I already practice yoga. I have other regular spiritual practices like prayer and sacred reading. I am even thinking seminary might be in my future. So why is meditating so difficult? Are you with me on this?

Problem is you gotta do it. I have been an on and off meditator since my twenties when I began suffering from anxiety and panic attacks. This year, blessed 2020, was my year to reinstate meditation. It didn’t happen in January. February came and went with no remarkable improvement. And then Covid-19 and the quarantine happened. 

Back in 2015 I interviewed Dr. Sara Lazar, the Harvard scientist who researched meditation and other integrative modalities to find out just what benefits they had to offer. Dr. Lazar found significant benefits from regular meditation practice. That video is here: https://youtu.be/xGvGbKuzQf8. 

I know it's good for me in so many ways; physically, emotionally, spiritually...

You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day, unless you're too busy; then you should sit for an hour.

~~Zen Saying

Still, I admit it has been a bit of a struggle. 

So I don’t have a perfect daily practice. I am practicing though. I invite you to join me.

But first, let’s practice a little yoga to loosen our joints and prepare the body and mind for a sweet, imperfect, short little meditation.

We can do this! 

Was it good for you? Let me know :)

Yoga is for everyone. However, while practicing with a video it is up to you to assess whether the class you have chosen is right for you. Please modify as needed and if you suffer from any specific injuries or diseases you should consult with your medical practitioner before practicing. Enjoy!

Namaste,

Connie

www.conniebowman.com

Silence and Speaking Up

Photo credit: Rick Kain

To see the Moon that cannot be seen

Turn your eyes inward

and look at yourself,
in silence.

In this world and the next,
Don’t talk about this and that;

Let him show you everything,

shining as one . . . in silence.

~~ Rumi

In yoga there is inherently an awareness of  a union of opposites; right and left, heaven and earth, in breath and out breath, silence and sound...We practice noticing the dualities or seeming opposites so that eventually we can transcend them. This we practice in different ways, asana, breath work, chanting, etc. With practice we can find a balance that can help us move gracefully even off our mats.

As we are using our voices to speak words that help proclaim that black lives matter, as a white woman (in this incarnation anyway!) I am acutely aware that silence can be dangerous to my black and brown brothers and sisters and my words are needed. However I am also aware that there needs to be deliberate, conscious silence between the words to assure that what I am saying is intentionally kind, and helpful and just. To speak simply for the sake of speaking runs the risk of our intended meaning being lost in translation.

Recently my husband shared a childhood memory of visiting a family in Germany, the experience clearly a formative one for him. The family lived on a dairy farm and, for some reason that my husband could not explain, his military parents who were stationed there dropped him off to spend an entire weekend. He recalled that his hosts, while very hospitable did not speak a word of english. He talked about feeling uncomfortable at first but eventually he relaxed and played games with the children where language was not a barrier. He recalls sleeping in a feather bed with a mattress on top of him instead of a blanket. They ate German food and drank fresh milk from the farm. In the morning when the mom asked my husband how he had slept, in German of course, it took a while to figure out what she had been trying to ask.  Eventually he understood, gave them a thumbs up sign and they all had a good laugh. 

Somehow, despite the language barrier, they showed him a good time and he learned about farm life in a small German town and about hospitality and caring for our fellow humans.

Similarly, several years ago I attended a ten day silent Vipassana meditation course. I signed up in advance and was put on a waiting list as these ten day courses are extremely popular. When I was notified that a spot had opened up during the upcoming month, I quickly rearranged my schedule so that I could attend.

I was a little nervous. Ten days was a lot of time to spend mostly in silent meditation. It actually went pretty well. I produced a podcast about the experience. You can check it out here.

What I want to talk about here though is the revelation I had at the end of the retreat when we were finally able to talk to our fellow participants. Although all of us were women, the group of us, about 20 total, were from all walks of life, different nationalities, socioeconomic groups and age ranges. We slept together in small rooms of three. My twin bed was in the middle of two others. My bunkmates were an Indian woman and another of Chinese descent. We didn’t speak as we made our beds and set out our things in our small quarters. We communicated non-verbally about logistics like storage space and bathroom sharing. It was interesting and challenging at first but as time went on, we got into a comfortable groove.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

~~Henry David Thoreau

By the end of the retreat, we had adopted a very sweet, very compatible co-existence. When one of us left the room while the others were sleeping or meditating, we made sure to close the door lightly. We respected each other’s space and privacy when needed. We ate meals together in quiet mindful appreciation of the food and one another’s company. Somehow, without even speaking a word, strangers became friends. 

True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable. 

— David Tyson Gentry

On the morning of the last day when we broke our silence and we were finally officially able to talk with one another, we were excited to share our experience, get to know one another and compare our early impressions to what we were now learning about one another. It was fascinating. I learned that my Indian roommate had two young boys and that she was the last member of her family to attend the Vipassana training. My other roommate had no children and worked as a scientist at a lab not far from my home. Most of us admitted to having certain ideas about the others in the group that changed as we neared the end of the ten days.

What I learned at that silent meditation retreat will stay with me for the rest of my life. Among many things, I learned that I make assumptions about people pretty quickly with little to go on but visual and verbal cues. I learned that although communication is essential to positive social interaction, words can sometimes get in the way. I learned that we can develop quality relationships with others who may seem different, by simply being present with them. I learned that caring for one another and mutual respect go a long way toward creating a peaceful, harmonious environment. No words were necessary for small acts of kindness.

In the absence of words however I was made acutely aware of the power of the word. The words we choose can heal or they can hurt. We must, in these times use our words to speak up against racism. Enough is truly enough. 

Ecclesiastes 3:7

a time to tear, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak

In the silence between our words, may we choose well. 
May we correct ourselves quickly when we choose poorly.
May our hearts be open to listen, especially when words fail us.
May our words contribute to a better, more loving world.
May these words that I write contribute in some way to the healing
of our black and brown brothers and sisters that they may know peace, serenity, safety, abundance and happiness.
May all beings everywhere be united as one family.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. 
~~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Connie Bowman is an actress, podcast host, yoga teacher, and author of several books, including There's an Elephant in My Bathtub, Super Socks and Back to Happy. Follow her on Instagram @conniebowmanactressauthoryogior visit www.conniebowman.comJoin her for yoga Tuesday evenings here.