Recently I decided I needed to invigorate my Practice. There are several things going around me that made me think it was a good time to re-ground myself in daily practice. It is interesting how all things done as a daily habit eventually reach the point where they are not beneficial - they are just habit. While habits are important and can carry you through many things until you reach a new stage in which the original habit reveals more depth - most often habits just become something you are used to doing that you get a little bit of satisfaction and dopamine from.

So...off I go to re-invigorate my morning practice. I gather to myself all the things that make it possible to return to the roots of my habit. Only nothing really happens. I find that doing them is not doing anything. It takes a while to figure out that what is needed in the moment is not to practice in isolation, but to develop the skill of practicing in motion. I have long been an advocate of that, but always kept a small bit that was done in its own compartment as the way in which I recharged.

Practice quickly evolved to include walking the dog. In walking the dog were all the elements of good practice that frankly, weren't being practiced anymore because life was so busy and demanding. There were too many stars shining in the sky that needed attention to keep track of their movement through the universe to have the time to track my own stationary place on a moving object. With walking the dog I began to rebuild the skill of practicing what is important by doing it no matter what else was going on. In the rain, in the cold, in sickness and in health. I practice because I am the vehicle that is neccessary for my urban dog to exist in contentment and health. He barks a little less too and is far less anxious and food focused.

Yesterday I watched the recap of the royal wedding. The beginning of which moved me to tears. At my age I sit and watch Markle walk alone down the aisle of a church on a televised broadcast to the world and cried for what I knew was the gift of seeing an enormous cultural shift occur on a global stage. As Prince Charles joined her at the Quire, and then left her to be greeted by Prince Harry it occurred to me that not only had I not expected to see this gesture occur in my lifetime, but that I hadn't even had the capacity to imagine it happening. A simple walk that will change the world for this generation and generations to come. Is the walk alone enough to sustain the change? Heavens no. It will depend on how many people, through the ages, repeat that walk. Each person arriving somewhere different. It also depends on how many people, through the ages, let that walk reveal to them what they did not even know enough to imagine was missing.

I walk the dog after mala and the birds. I mark the end of days with prayer and commitment knowing that with each night I pass further away from what I have come to know and closer to what I don't know enough to even imagine. Each morning I start with a walk that really - doesn't have much to do with me at all, but that may be what is a part of what transforms the ages. I am a part of, but not the center. I am nothing in the end, but neccessary throughout. I age and will die, as will the dog, and no one will remember us through the ages but every step we take - while we can take it - shapes the opportunities for the sentient life that comes after, that comes before and that comes with us. Markle's walk may not only change what has come, but it has already changed what has been. The past is lived again in each new moment and understood differently. Nothing is static. The stars move and we track them through the sky. We bounce. We shine. We learn what it means to practice and not perform.