Endings and Openings

For today’s Sunday News, I’ll start with a piece of Mindful Boston studio history.

2013 Boston

You might remember that in 2013 there was a bombing on April 15th during the Boston Marathon.

In response to the pain we saw around us, the coordinator at Ten Thousand Villages and I organized an emergency free meditation the following week.

The online event listing at our Meetup Group advertised it as “a service to our community. Meditating on compassion and human connection is one of the traditional ways to build resiliency during times of stress.” It was our very first collaborative Community Meditation Night, and I’m proud to say that one of the first responders from Mass General Hospital attended that meditation night.

2001/02 NYC

And some earlier history, from New York. In 2002, the Meetup software platform was founded as a healing community-building response to the 9-11 Attack of 2001.

Because of the original intention of healing and human connection, I consciously chose Meetup as the main organizing platform for Mindful Boston events. In the last 10 years, our studio has scheduled 230 meetup events with that software. And now that company’s intentions and formats have significantly changed.
So much so that it’s time to let it go.

The future of event listings

In the future there will always be two ways to see upcoming events at the studio:

• Events will be announced during Sunday News emails like this very email.
• The event listing on our website mindfulboston.com/eventsschedule will always be available and updated.
  

How this relates to the practice of meditation

There is a bittersweetness to acknowledging the beginning of a new chapter. Any doorway that opens to a newness must also include closing the old.

We will be unpacking this idea more during our
First-Sunday free webinar in seven days, next Sunday, March 3rd 3pm.

I will be reading one quote from the book Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, and then leading a meditation based upon that quote.

In this month’s chapter Siddhartha meets the Buddha, has a conversation with the Buddha, and then decides to leave forever.I hope you can join us!
This link goes live at 2:50pm for 10 minutes of silent time with music, and then the guided classroom is from 3pm to 3:30.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85349851047

See you around the meditation cushion,

Gena Bean

Lead meditation teacher
at MindfulBoston.com

136 Magazine Street #4
Cambridge MA 02139