Dear Friends,
Right at the start of February comes a Cross-Quarter Day, February 2, which has been noted and celebrated by people from ancient times in various cultures, as it falls exactly halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.
Here’s a little information about the day, from this source: https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/geologic-column-february-2-day-long-celebrated-its-seasonal-ties
Feb. 2 is the first Cross Quarter Day of the year. The ancient Celts celebrated the first stirrings of spring and the onset of lactation in ewes, soon to start lambing, with the Imbolc festival. The 2nd is also Brigid’s Day. Originally revered as a Celtic fire goddess, Brigid was so popular that she was embraced by the early Catholic Church and canonized as a saint. Both Brigid the fire goddess and St. Brigid were associated with sacred fire, holy wells and springs. And both heralded the transition from the dark season of winter into springtime.
In the early Christian tradition, Feb. 2 was celebrated as Candlemas, when all of the candles that would be used in churches during the coming year were blessed — it was a mass for the candles.
We, too, still in the darker, shorter days of winter, can note and celebrate the gradual lengthening of days and the first stirrings of spring. The owls are mating and you can hear their tender conversations. The buds on the nearly dormant trees begin to fatten, and the coyote willow branches begin to turn their flaming yellow-orange color. Coyotes may be beginning to mate, too, so look out for them. They can get aggressive. And we bless the candles, and the rituals of light help us remember that we still need time to rest.
In small agrarian communities, this was also a time when families would come together to consult with each other regarding the planting that would come in spring, so that the community would have a good variety of crops. A time to choose and bless your seeds.
For us there is some of this, too. We’ll be offering an Introduction to Zen practice series, and a one-day Open Source retreat to support us in our keeping company with the quiet and spaciousness of this gestational season, a time when we can look inside our lives and our community and make choices about our coming practices as we refill our reserves of energy.
Yours in the Dharma,
Sarah
For our ongoing schedule please see our website at smszen.org
February
Monday, February 1, 6:10 PM: Meditation and Sutra Service
Saturdays, February 6, 13 – 4-6 PM: Dharma Study Series, Sarah Bender, Roshi
Monday, February 8, 6:10 PM: Meditation and 49th Day Service for Steve Milligan
Thursdays, February 11, 18, 25, March 4: Intro to Zen Class
Monday, February 15, 6:10 PM: Meditation and Dharma Talk, Sarah Bender, Roshi
Sunday, February 21: One day Open Source Retreat
Monday, February 22, 6:10 PM: Meditation and Dharma Talk, Andrew Palmer, Sensei
March
Tuesday, March 9 – Sunday March, 14: Open Source Meditation Retreat
Tuesday, March 9: Practice Period begins
Beginning Thursday March 18, 8 PM: ORDINARY MIND: EXPLORATIONS IN ZEN AND BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY, Megan Rundel Sensei
Saturdays, March 20, 27, April 3, 10, 17, 24 Koan Discussion, Sarah Bender, Roshi
Ongoing Meditation Schedule
Sundays: Candlelight Meditation 8 PM
Mondays: Meditation and evening starting at 6:10 PM
Wednesdays: Morning meditation 6:30-7:30 AM
Saturdays: Morning Meditation 6:30-8:00 AM, discussion 8-8:30 AM
Most Saturday mornings, a sangha member will kick off a discussion with a brief talk, pertaining to their own experience of practice right now. These conversations are rich and real!
New Open Source Email List
If you’d like to join the info/discussion group for Open Source (which Megan Rundel recently set up) just email the address below with your name and email address.
opensourcezen+subscribe@groups.io
Upcoming Events
2021 Calendar
The Springs Mountain Sangha Steering Committee has generated our 2021 calendar which can be found here. There are a lot of exciting things planned for next year! Mark your calendars for the retreats. We are hoping to be able to gather in person for our Fall Retreat, October 18-24 and are planning more in person physically distanced things as the warmer weather arrives.
Candlelight Meditation – Sunday Evenings
No discussion, just meditation. Join us Sundays 8-8:30 PM.
MLK Stories and Event
Springs Mountain Sangha’s participation in the Colorado College Hosted MLK Day event was a huge success. Our participation started with a guided meditation led by Sarah Bender, Roshi. Perry Pellerin was instrumental in SMS’s story project and involvement with Colorado College’s Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Community out of Chaos” event. Kuddos to Percy and his support team members Phil Brown , Debbie Stavish, Liz Cramer and Kelly McFarland. What better occasion for an SMS historic first on Facebook Live to streaming community stories and poems about race and its strife to the sangha at large. There were at least 40 participants. The recording is still available on the Springs Mountain Sangha Facebook page. Would you like to be involved in the 2021 MLK event ? Put your thinking caps on now, while the march toward justice continues every day.
Dharma Study Series
with Sarah Bender, Roshi
Saturdays, 4 PM MST, Jan. 30 and Feb 6, 13
We’ll continue our exploration of the roots of our tradition and our own direct experience of them, while anchoring our study in David Hinton’s book, China Root: Taoism, Ch’an, and Original Zen
Forty-Ninth Day Ceremony for Steve Milligan
Monday, February 8, 6:10 PM
In the Open Source we have a beautiful ritual for the 49th day after someone has died. After a period of meditation, we’ll Sing a few sutras, and talk to and about Steve as we thank him for being in our lives and acknowledge that now it’s time for us to turn fully back into our own lives and bless him as he goes on from here. Everyone is welcome to attend. If you didn’t have a chance to get to know Steve, this is also an opportunity to get to know him a little bit now, in the way that we can. It’s one more way that we weave him into community, even in his absence.
Introduction to Zen Practice
Thursdays, Feb 11, 18, 25 and March 4
6:30 – 8 PM
What is the Way?
Intro to Zen
Thursday nights, 6:00pm MST beginning in February
Feb 11, 18, 25; March 4th
incorporating a possible half-day retreat TBA
Save the Date!
Save the Date!
This four week series of 1.5 hour zoom classes will be taught by Springs Mountain Sangha members, Regan Arntzen & Debbie Stavish supported by Sarah Bender, Roshi. The class is offered as dana to community and is taught from the perspective of beginner introduction to Zen practice and the koan tradition. All members are invited to support the class from this perspective, and it’s an opportunity to learn the basics of our tradition anew.
More details regarding agenda to soon follow.
To register please contact Regan: rrarntzen@gmail.com
Ecodharma Group
Hello, Ecodharma Dancers!
Looking back on the gatherings we’ve held, here at Creek Bend and on Zoom, what I see is quite lovely. We spent some time to begin with exploring how Ecodharma might express itself in our lives individually and as a group. We then further explored different areas of particular interest or importance, reaching out roots and branches into the live territory of our practice: learning about the current critical issues facing humans living as part of a hugely stressed planetary life system, and investigating, each and together, how we can become more of the healing and less of the damaging.
We discovered how integrally important it is to learn how much the damage we humans have done is related to the damage we humans have done to each other—racism, in particular—and how healing our relationships is essential to any other healing we can bring about.
And, in the midst of all of this, pandemic has altered all of the frameworks within which we have been understanding our lives and our Bodhisattva Vows. How to even communicate with those whose world view seems to have so little in common with our own? And this winter, there is profound fatigue——and so, taking some time to rest is essential.
Here is something Joan Sutherland wrote about rest:
Rest isn’t laziness; it’s feeling the way the earth cups us when we lie down…listening to everything resting around us…refusing to be riled by what usually riles us…paying attention to the small voices drowned out by the chorus of our busyness in the long days of other seasons. Whole fields inside us go fallow, and we begin to know that there is something very large and entirely radiant that is pregnant with us.
And so, our Ecodharma group will rest, as well. Each of us will continue to explore, but we won’t be meeting.
There will be an ecodharma offering nearby, starting Feb. 5 and led by Aruna Dhammadira, that might interest you, and information about that is here: https://mailchi.mp/e36f66fbfd28/new-course-offering-in-2021
Big thanks to you all for the Ecodharma that you are manifesting in your lives, and huge gratitude for Debbie Stavish and Mary Montoya, who birthed and have guided our group!
Sarah
One-Day Retreat
Image: Morning Shadow by Piper Leigh
Join all the Open Source communities for a one-day retreat featuring meditation, dharma talks, silence, conversation, and spiritual community. All are welcome, join us!
As we enter the Year of the Ox, we will take up a koan on our true nature:
Wu-tsu said, “It’s like a buffalo that passes through a latticed window. It’s head, horns, and four legs all pass through. Why can’t the tail pass through as well?
Register at the following link!
Sliding Scale
http://www.crimsongatemeditation.org/upcoming-events.html
Open Source Meditation Retreat
with Sarah Bender, Roshi, Andrew Palmer, Sensei, Megan Rundel, Sensei, and Tenney Nathanson, Sensei March 9-14, online
Save the dates
Practice Period
Going Into the Mystery With Community
16 Bodhisattvas enter the bath
SMS Practice Period March 9 – May 2
Practice Period is a specific time we set aside each year to deepen our practice individually and as a community. Everyone is encouraged and welcomed to be a part of this rededication time.
It begins with our Open Source Retreat on March 9th and ends with our Integrative retreat on April 20 – May 2 (participation in the retreats is optional). A committee of Regan Arntzen, Deb Stavish, and Liz Cramer was formed to do the preliminary organization and direction. If anyone would like to volunteer to be a member of the Practice Period Leadership team, please reach out to Regan (rrarntzen@gmail.com) no later than Thur Feb 4th.
We are looking for volunteers to assist in many of the planned activities. Examples include:
* leading 30 minute earth walks,
* hosting a daily 6:30-7:30am easy sit (you don’t have to show yourself sitting, just a Zoom of a lit candle and your altar),
* hosting ‘Hakuin’s Happy Hour’- a Zoom social hour on Fridays 4-6pm.
Please email Regan by Feb. 11th regarding helping in one of these facilitating positions rrarntzen@gmail.com
We’d like this to be a period where we really dive deep together and celebrate our connection to one another during this time that has proven to be a little lonely.
Additionally we are seeking someone to help create the Practice Period booklet that will be available to everyone who participates. We’ll need someone to help with content organization and an artist to create the booklet cover.
Because of this year’s unique interaction and communication challenges, our team will need extra time to organize and make this period as special as it’s always been. Therefore it will be organized in three ways:
1. We will release a one-time Practice Period Mailchimp which will reveal dates, offerings, activities, how to more directly participate, etc.
2. If you’d like to participate at a more direct level, we will be creating an email group list that will be sent to your inbox weekly with more detailed information and communication
3. There will be a tab on our website which will provide the general structure of the Practice Period.
It would be helpful to let us know Please let us know by Feb. 25th if you are planning to join us in this Practice Period. For example this will help with knowing how many pamphlets to create and mail out. Please RSVP to Regan: rrarntzen@gmail.com.
We hope you will join us, at any participation level, in the soak!
ORDINARY MIND:
EXPLORATIONS IN ZEN AND BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY
BEGINS MARCH 18, 2021, 8-9:30 MOUNTAIN
MEGAN RUNDEL, SENSEI
In this ongoing collaborative discussion group, we will take up Buddhist teachings on the nature of the mind, suffering, healing, and no-self from a Zen perspective.
Each evening will open with a period of meditation, followed by a short talk on the topic at hand, and group discussion. There may be short readings from time to time. We will begin with an exploration of the Four Noble Truths and other aspects of the Buddha’s teachings. Each evening’s topic will be paired with a koan, in the spirit of weaving and unweaving the mind.
If you would like to participate, or have questions, email info@crimsongatemeditation. This offering is donation based. To make a donation, go to http://www.crimsongatemeditation.org/membership.html.
About the teacher: Megan Rundel, Sensei is a teacher in the Pacific Zen School, authorized by Joan Sutherland, Roshi. She is also a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in Oakland, CA. Megan has a longstanding interest in the uses of meditation to alleviate suffering and promote creativity and integration.
Online Presence Committee
We are looking for volunteers to help with a discussion of our online presence, to include our website as well as our Facebook postings. Please contact Regan: rrarntzen@gmail.com if you are interested in joining this new team.
Steering Committee Minutes
Steering committee minutes are available to all sangha members. If you are interested in receiving these monthly minutes, please contact Debbie Stavish at gardenmail@msn.com
Newcomer’s Orientation
Newcomer’s orientation is offered by request. This is a brief introduction to our meditation sessions and forms, which we pre-covid had offered on Community Night on the second Monday of the month. Please contact Kelly McFarland at s.kelly.HLS@gmail.com if you are interested in this orientation.
Work in the Room
Work in the Room by telephone or Zoom can be arranged with Andrew Palmer, Sensei at alpalmer128@gmail.com or with Sarah Bender, Roshi at sembender@gmail.com. Work in the Room is a close encounter of the sacred/ordinary kind—an encounter among you, a teacher, and the great matter that is most deeply real for you right now—and what clearly matters because it shows up in a conversation about the Way, whether, on the face of it, it seems sacred or ordinary. No special undertaking is required.
Recordings of Talks
Did you know that you can listen to previously recorded talks online? Sarah Bender, Roshi’s talks are available here. This link also includes talks she has given through Pacific Zen Institute. Andrew Palmer, Sensei’s talks are available here.
Many Arms of Guanyin
Aruna Dhammadhira will be offering Eco-Dharma and Permaculture Classes in February – April:
Eco-Dharma
Fridays 10:00-11:30 am
February 5, 19, March 5, 19, April 2, 16
This is a course that will show the interconnection of the Dharma (spiritual teachings of the Buddha) and Ecology. We will explore ethical principles and the law of interdependence and how they can inform an appropriate response to our current environmental crisis.
Aruna will be drawing upon the work of Joanna Macy, David Loy and Bhikkhu Analayo to present lessons which encourage inquiry and discussion.
Permaculture in Practice
Fridays, 10:00-11:30 am
Feb 12, 26, Mar 12, 26, April 9, 23
This course is for anyone who wants to learn about the principles of permaculture and how to apply them. You will watch short videos on your own before coming together to discuss them once every two weeks . You will apply what you learn to a project of your own choice, either at Deer Park Community Garden or at your own home.
Both courses will use the Zoom format as long as the Covid 19 situation prohibits group gatherings. Donations accepted on a sliding scale (see registration form).
To get a taste of the content, check out Lesson One Video put together by the Women’s Permaculture Guild.
To register for either or both courses, click on this link.
COVID-19 has exacerbated the food insecurity which one in four Americans have suffered at some point in their lives. Pets have indirectly suffered due to unemployment and financial crises abound. Consider learning more about the following local outreach groups :
- Colorado Springs Food Rescue:
- Westside Cares:
- San Luis Valley Animal Welfare:
- Colorado Springs Humane Society:
- Family Promise Shelter of Colorado Springs:
Wellness Committee
Our sangha’s wellness committee is headed by Linda Hodges, who updates the committee regularly on needs of particular members so that we can reach out to each other when needed!
If you could use a boost of any sort, or if you’d like to be available to respond when the need arises, please contact Linda at hikerhodges@gmail.com.
Volunteer with SMS
Are you interested in volunteering to help with a specific project within the sangha? Do you have a particular skill or enthusiasm for something that might be helpful? Would you like to help out, but not sure how? SMS truly values and depends on the many efforts given freely by the sangha to the sangha. This is dana and is so much appreciated. If you have questions or want to help, please contact Kelly McFarland S.Kelly.HLS@gmail.com
About Dana
During these times when we cannot meet in person, you can donate to Springs Mountain Sangha through our PayPal account. You can get to the SMS PayPal link on the SMS web site at:
https://www.smszen.org/supportsms/ or by selecting the donate icon:
We depend on the generosity of our members to support the work of our sangha.
If you want to make a donation to Sarah Bender specifically, for example, dana for classes, group meetings or work on the phone (suggested donations for these are $10 per class, or $20 for a 20 min. individual meeting) you can do this by sending a check directly to her.
Sarah Bender
7528 Jenkin Place
Colorado Springs, CO 80919
Support for Cloud Dragon
An easy way to support Cloud Dragon, the Joan Sutherland Dharma WorksAmazon shoppers, sign in at smile.amazon.com and choose Cloud Dragon Dharma Works as the charity you would like 0.5% of your purchases to go to. It costs you nothing extra. We’re grateful for your generosity.
See also Joan Sutherland’s Patreon site,
https://www.patreon.com/posts/do-you-trust-yr-31567633
This is another good way to support Joan’s work and receive fresh teachings from her