Turning the Year — Rami Schandall
It is natural to take time to reflect as the year turns — a time for meditative retreat in the darkest days after Winter Solstice. Let us close this year, which has been fraught on so many levels, with a dedicated space for that reflection, to integrate and inquire: Where we are now? What have we learned? What are we unlearning? What are our intentions for the dawn of this new year?
I will facilitate a meditation circle to turn the year. We will gather each morning for one week, marking our transition to 2021.
December 28, 2020 — January 1, 2021
8:30–9 a.m.
Our morning practice is simple — a brief greeting, a poem or short reading, followed by a 20-minute sit. Zoom will connect us where we are.
This morning meditation circle is my third online “mini-retreat” in 2020. Each retreat has been so affirming, centering, and supportive — simply by coming together with a clear commitment to practice for a short time over a few days.
This year in particular, I will mark and honour a number of significant anniversaries, happy and sad, in the holiday weeks. It will also be a non-typical holiday, as we are unable to reunite with my closest family, who live all over the globe. I am open to the full range of experience — joy, gratitude, grief — that will likely arise. I am personally committed to turn the week of mini-retreat into a full “self-retreat.” I look forward to deep listening, rest, reading, and reflection in these five days — to seeing the sunrise and moonrise, to walking in the park with my husband, to cuddling with cats in short days and long nights, to candles and bells to ring in the New Year. I encourage you to join us for morning practice, and consider how you might create a larger sense of retreat for yourself in this time.
Originally published at https://ramischandall.com on November 13, 2020.
