✴ VIDEO REPLAYS ✴

You can access replays for all classes (as well as the June 30th workshop!) on this page.
It will be updated after each class. To go to the ESC student portal, click here.

✴ week 1 ✴

✴ Our Community Values ✴ 

~ Confidentiality ~ what we say here stays here

~ Open and judgment-free space

~ Really listen to each other with compassion

~ Being honest, real and authentic

~ Respectful, kind, considerate ~ don’t interrupt and be as present as possible

~ Refrain from giving unsolicited advice

~ Smile when you want to smile; don’t smile when you don’t want to smile

~ Respecting differences and not making assumptions

~ Room not to speak

✴ week 2 ✴

✴ week 3 ✴

✴ week 4 ✴

✴ retreat ✴

Here's the "Music for Plants" album we listened to during our art journaling and movement practices: 

✴ week 5 ✴

✴ week 6 ✴

✴ week 7 ✴

✴ week 8 ✴

Here's the replay video for our last class: Your Compassionate Self.

Thank you so much for a lovely 8+ weeks! 

Here are the quotes and poems that we shared in our last class:

Instructions on Not Giving Up
By Ada Limon
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

+++

You don’t have to act crazy anymore
by Hafiz 

You don’t have to act crazy anymore ~
We all know you were good at that,

Now retire, my dear,
From all that hard work you do

Of bringing pain to your sweet eyes and heart.

Look in a clear mountain mirror
See the beautiful ancient warrior
And the divine elements
You always carry inside

That infused this universe with sacred life
So long ago

We Should Talk about This Problem
by Hafiz

There is a Beautiful Creature
Living in a hole you have dug.
So at night
I set fruit and grains
And little pots of wine and milk
Beside your soft earthen mounds,
And I often sing.
But still, my dear,
You do not come out.
I have fallen in love with Someone
Who hides inside you.
We should talk about this problem---
Otherwise,
I will never leave you alone.

My Brilliant Image
by Hafiz
One day the sun admitted
I am just a shadow.
I wish I could show you
The infinite incandescence
That has cast my brilliant image!
I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The Astonishing Light
Of your own Being!

+++

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

+++

You and Art
by William Stafford

Your exact errors make a music
that nobody hears.
Your straying feet find the great dance,
walking alone.
And you live on a world where stumbling
always leads home.
Year after year fits over your face—
when there was youth, your talent
was youth;
later, you find your way by touch
where moss redeems the stone;
and you discover where music begins
before it makes any sound,
far in the mountains where canyons go
still as the always-falling, ever-new flakes of snow.

+++

Anthem
by Leonard Cohen

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what has passed away
Or what is yet to be
Ah, the wars they will be fought again
The holy dove, she will be caught again
Bought and sold, and bought again
The dove is never free
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
We asked for signs
The signs were sent
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah, and the widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see
I can't run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
A thundercloud
They're going to hear from me
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
You can add up the parts
But you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart
To love will come
But like a refugee
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in

 +++

And the phrases for offering the merit:

May we be open to joy and suffering with wisdom and compassion
May we accept ourselves and others just as we are
May all beings live in peace
May all beings know belonging
May all beings be free