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Newsette 6-3-2021

It is now early June, and summer solstice is only a few weeks away. I’ve been reading some of your newsletters and notice that some Zen Centers are beginning to open their zendos to in-person zazen and to half-day or daylong retreats. Other groups are taking advantage of the longer days and warm weather to hold sittings and daylong retreats outside. As we in the U.S. continue to venture out and reconnect with friends and family, I’m aware of the many parts of the world in which this is still not possible.

For those of you who attended Branching Streams Flow On two weeks ago, please complete the Survey I emailed yesterday so we can use your suggestions for planning our next offerings. For everyone, if you’d like to watch Teresa Bouza’s seven-minute video of nature photos and words, here’s the link.

I will be on vacation next week and my next Newsette will be sent the week of June 14th.

Zoom Clinics with Jon Voss will be offered every two weeks instead of weekly, on Wednesdays from 11 to noon PDT, June 16 and 30. Here is the Zoom link or Meeting ID: 222 402 816, Passcode:057143.

Here are a few offerings coming up this weekend and next week, all online.

Valley Streams Zen Sangha in Sacramento, CA is offering “Allowing Emptiness to Fill the Page,” a one-day Zen and Writing retreat on Saturday, June 5from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. PDT, led by author and lay Zen teacher Beth Jacobs. one-day retreat and writing workshop led by author and lay Zen teacher Beth Jacobs, Ph.D.

Sandra Barros Pena will be giving the June 6 Sunday dharma talk on “The Bodhisattva Vows as Heart-Based Action” at Zen Center North Shore at 8:30 a.m. EDT. Sandra will be Zooming in from Argentina where she works in a community clinic with women who have experienced sexual abuse or gender violence.

At Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, the Sunday morning talk on June 6th (zazen at 9:30, talk at 10:10 CDT) will be given by anthropologist Juan Pablo Restrepo, their participant from Patagonia in Argentina, speaking on “Spiritual Practice in the Age of Ecological Crisis.”

Also on Sunday June 6, Mountain Rain Zen Community in Vancouver, BC will have a memorial service for the 215 native children whose remains were discovered recently on the grounds of one of Canada’s largest residential schools in Kamloops—”holding the grieving communities in our hearts.”

Alan Senauke, Abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, is part of a team producing the Burma Spring Film Festival June 4 – 13. He says, “Extraordinary films and beautifully constructed panels, all of which throw a bright light on life in Burma/Myanmar today.”

May you be well.

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