In the past several years, my partner and I have completely reinvented our traditions–coinciding with our decision to go to a healthy plant-based diet. The diet has worked out great for us, in terms of our health, and it has made us both more sensitized to the plight of the animals and that of the planet.
That it has been such a good move for us has prompted me to consider why it took so long to truly understand cause and effect. I’ve been chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo–for about five years now–a Buddhist mantra that is based on the law of cause and effect.
My success with a vegan/ healthy plant-based diet may be because I finally live the law of cause and effect. I have never been much of a consumer or a traditionalist. But I do enjoy the pause that the holidays bring. This year I found myself wondering what I would like to do differently next year.
Traditionally, I do not have New Year’s resolutions because I do not have any good memories associated with this. But everyone is different–and if the New Year is a new set point for you, go for it!
Finally, I decided that my New Year’s resolution is just to continue doing what I have been doing–writing, learning Greek, sticking to my plant-based diet and exercising (doing yoga and meditation daily and walking several times a week).
Everything is a practice and as a fellow Unitarian Universalist lay minister said “a practice is work. It doesn’t just happen.”
The following short video is how I learned Nam Myoho Renge Kyo:
o learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
To learn more about my recently published novel — The Unicorn, The Mystery, click here:
My partner who is more out in the world than me comes home with fascinating stories.
After a trip to the hardware store, she tells me that she had a conversation she had with a clerk who mentioned that another coworker of hers died of breast cancer. My partner told this woman about the hormones in dairy that contribute to cancer. I was amazed and dismayed to hear that the clerk said she had never heard of this before. There’s been some talk in the plant-based community about putting labels on dairy like labels were put on cigarettes warning consumers that the product is bad for their health. This can’t happen to soon.
My partner also came back from our local food coop and told me that she struck up a conversation with a customer who was buying cheese. “If you knew what was in it and how they treat the dairy cows, you wouldn’t be buying that,” she said.
I asked her what the customer said, and Barbara responded that the woman said nothing but put the cheese in her basket.
When she told me this, I just shook my head. These kinds of responses really are a shame. People have really been brainwashed. I came to veganism after the age of sixty and after a health scare. My impetus to change was to continue being on this planet. (I’ve since learned so much that I can never go back to eating animal products.)
Since I became vegan so late in life, even if I wanted to be judgmental, I couldn’t be.
It isn’t people’s faults that they have been brainwashed.
I have a Buddhist mantra that I do every day, but now I have added a line at the end:
I wish for all beings to wake up and be free.
And I wish for them to do this before it is too late.
This is a new cow friend who we are hoping can go to a sanctuary soon — where she can live out her natural life (instead of being slaughtered and turned into hamburger).
To learn more about my most recently published novel — The Unicorn, The Mystery, click here:
This month I took part in a Unitarian Universalist service that talked about seasonal joy and what it means.
The YouTube video of the reflection is below. The text is below that. I hope the work has some meaning for you.
Hello.
When I think about what most brings me joy, I think about being part of the universe.
Being part of the vastness—looking up and seeing the frozen stars and moon brings me joy. Watching the winter sun setting–cold and hard behind a line of bare limbed trees–and then walking in the darkness and looking at the lights brings me joy also.
When I need to find joy, I remind myself that it helps to look up.
Unexpected strains of music also bring me joy. Dancing with my partner to the “Snoopy Song” brings me great joy.
I have a Buddhist practice of staying in the moment – of keeping myself wired to be positive – and I find much joy in the moment.
As the saying goes–neurons that fire together wire together. As a human being–who like all humans–is programmed for negativity–I take joy in rewiring myself to be happy and positive and healthy.
I take joy at being able to stay in the moment and at the deep knowing that the moment is all we really have.
Of course, as a writer I must look back–as in the case of the memoir about my father’s death that I am revising. It’ll be five years this May that my father died, and I am still greatly saddened by the thought of him being gone.
I know that the work is good and necessary for me to do, but when I go back to working on a chapter, I am deeply saddened because I am experiencing being back in the moment that I am writing about. I am so depressed after writing that I cannot even get down on the floor to do my yoga and meditation practice.
So, I sit in the sadness.
But I finish the short chapter the next day and I am back on the floor that evening-–working at doing my practice and delighting in being part of the universe.
–Namaste
To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
To learn more about my recently published novel — The Unicorn, The Mystery, click here:
I am reposting this talk that I gave last year to mark the occasion of Hanukkah. The talk was a Unitarian Universalist (UU) service that was called “Ringing in the Light.”
I talked about my childhood memories of being touched by Hanukkah and my experiences in celebrating the Winter Solstice and with the Gnostic Gospels. You can see my words below on the YouTube video or read the reflection below that.
As far back as I can remember, the light beckoned.
The sun was a ball of fire in the sky. The light changed into vibrant colors in the morning and the evening. It filtered through the branches of trees. The sunlight had, in fact, shined down and helped to form the trees. So the light was in the trees (along with the rain and the earth).
Even when it was cloudy, I knew the sun was there. Sometimes I could see the ball of sun outlined behind the gray clouds.
The first time I remember being drawn to the light in a religious context was when I was in elementary school watching a play about Hanukkah.
Despite its nearness to Christmas on the calendar, Hanukkah is one of the lesser holidays in Judaism. Hanukkah, also called The Festival of Lights, began last Tuesday at sunset and ends this Wednesday, December, 20th, at nightfall.
When I asked my partner what Hanukkah meant to her, she responded that it is a celebration of survival, hope and faith.
The holiday celebrates the victory of the Maccabees, detailed in the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud.
This victory of the Maccabees, in approximately 160 BCE – BCE standing for Before The Common Era — resulted in the rededication of the Second Temple. The Maccabees were a group of Jewish rebel warriors who took control of Judea.
According to the Talmud, the Temple was purified and the wicks of the menorah burned for eight days.
But there was only enough sacred oil for one day’s lighting. It was a miracle.
Hanukkah is observed by lighting the eight candles of the menorah at varying times and various ways. This is done along with the recitation of prayers. In addition to the eight candles in the menorah, there is a ninth called a shamash (a Hebrew word that means attendant). This ninth candle, the shamash, is in the center of the menorah.
It is all very complicated of course – the history and the ritual – but what I remember most is sitting in that darkened auditorium and being drawn to the pool of light around the candles on my elementary school stage.
I am not Jewish. I say that I was raised secular – but that is putting it mildly. My mother was, in fact, a bible-burning atheist. Added to that, I was always cast as one of the shepherds in the school’s Christmas pageant since I was the tallest child in elementary school.
Also, I had Jewish neighbors – and as a future lesbian and book worm growing up in the sameness of a working class neighborhood — I may have responded to difference and had a realization that I was part of it.
Then I grew up, came out, thanked the Goddess for my secular upbringing, and celebrated the Winter Solstice with candles and music. This year, the Solstice falls on December 21st. The Winter Solstice (traditionally the shortest period of daylight and the longest night of the year) is this coming Thursday in the Northern Hemisphere of planet Earth – which is where we are.
One of our friends who we celebrated the Solstice with is Julia Haines. Julia is a musician who has performed at Restoration. She has a wonderful composition of Thunder Perfect Mind which she accompanies with her harp playing. You can find her on YouTube. Thunder Perfect Mind, of which I just read an excerpt, is one of the ancient texts of the Gnostic Gospels.
The Gnostic Gospels were discovered in the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. Originally written in Coptic, these texts date back to ancient times and give us an alternative glimpse into the Gospels that are written in the New Testament. They are so important that they are banned in some conventional religions. And in my book, that’s a good reason to read them.
Reading them led me to think of myself as a Gnostic – meaning one who has knowledge and who pursues knowledge – including mystical knowledge. The Gnostic Gospels have provided me with inspiration for my writing, particularly in my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders, soon to be published by Adelaide Books. And they also inspire me in the novel I am currently writing — titled The Unicorn, The Mystery.
I am inspired by the Gnostic Gospels in part because they let in the light. In particular, they let in the light of the feminine.
As Julia says in her rendition of Thunder:
I am godless
I am Goddess
So how does finding the light factor into my experience of Unitarian Universalism? Later in life, after fifty, I found a religion that fit my values. I found a religion wide enough – and I might add, secure enough – to embrace nonconformity.
In finding a congregation that is diverse in many ways – including religious diversity – I have found a deeper sense of myself.
And in that self, I recognize that the darkness is as least as necessary and as important as the light.
As a creative writer, I spend much of my time in the gray-matter of imagination.
It is in that darkness where I find the light.
Namaste
To learn more about my most recently published novel — The Unicorn, The Mystery, click here:
Janet Mason, author 