Spring Thunder

Happy New Year!  Ki Ki!  So So!

I hope everyone had a happy and cheerful Shambhala Day, and the opportunity to experience some of the richness of our community, both at the Shambhala Center and beyond.  Personally, I love the sense of a fresh start, connecting with a sort of beginner’s mind in my relationships, environment, and attitude.  There is even the sense of a renewed commitment to discipline and spontaneity, culture-wide.  Also, I just love big Sangha parties.  Thanks to Jason Bray for coordinating, and for all the many, many volunteers who made it happen!

Particularly fun for me was taking part in the cultural offerings.  I shared a poem, and then got to wear my Dharma Arts Council Chair hat and help announce our upcoming Spring Arts Festival, which we are calling Spring Thunder: Treasuring Creativity in Community.  It seems like a highly appropriate theme, as the image of thunder as joining Heaven and Earth came up more than once in our I Ching reading, brought to us in part by our dear “DIY Shaman” Gardner.  The same image is noted and elaborated upon in a recent article in the Shambhala Times called, “The Magic of Lhasang.”

March is full of opportunities to practice and appreciate the contemplative arts.  Lisa Stanley is teaching the Shambhala Arts Parts I-II on March 21-23, and then the following weekend Saturday March 29 is our International Shambhala Arts Festival.  We have a full day program planned in Portland.  The afternoon is going to be an open house, and we are going to take over the Center with collage supplies.  Contemplate some of those old “snake skins” we shed from last year, as Lisa Stanley put it in her reflections on Sunday.  This will be an opportunity to make some art out of those old journal entries, photographs, memorabilia, and magazines.  Maybe your collage will have to do with all you moved through in the past year, or maybe it is more of a visionary piece, looking ahead to the new year of the Wood Horse. The finished pieces will be displayed at our evening reception.  I’ve already managed to convince a few of our many Sangha artists to take part in our performance salon, and I hope anyone interested will connect with Abbey and our awesome sign up sheet (pictured below) in the new, beautifully redecorated office.  Bring your kids for a day of collage-making, or stop by for some artsy-socializing.  Plus, it’s going to be another big Sangha party!  And artists do it best.

Blessings,
Caitlin Bargenquast
PDX Shambhala Dharma Arts Council, Chair