My Current Soundtrack?

I wanted to listen to some music that I really felt deeply today. However the songs that have been lifeboats to me the past couple years, I still like them, but when I try to listen, they aren't resonating the same with me these days.

I need a new soundtrack.

I am in a new place. 

I started searching today. The search hopped around.  Then the search landed on Trevor Hall.

Trevor Hall - mindful breathing (feat. Thich Nhat Hanh) [Official Lyric Video]

This song led me to tears

I don't really know why.

But I see myself 25 years ago, I am working in the opening year of an inner city charter elementary school, and the only time I had to myself during the day was around 10 AM when I'd take my lunch into a large upstairs storage room of sorts.  And I would say to myself:

"Breathing in (and I breathed in) I calm body and mind

Breathing out (and I breathed out) I smile

Living in the present moment (I breathed in)

This is the only moment (I breathed out)" 

-Thich Nhat Hanh

I took these 2 breaths of stillness.

Those breaths didn't feel still. 

But I reached for what Thich Nhat Hanh was trying to teach me.

And I can see how those 2 breaths were seeds. 

And those 2 breaths are sprouting still.

**********************************

 And this is a refreshing perspective on Mother's Day nudged to me by Timothy Frantzich and now quoted by Wikipedia -

The "Appeal to womanhood throughout the world"^[1] (later known as "Mothers' Day Proclamation") by Julia Ward Howe was an appeal for women to unite for peace in the world. Written in 1870, Howe's "Appeal to womanhood" was a pacifist reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. The appeal was tied to Howe's feminist conviction that women had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level. 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_Day_Proclamation 

 

"Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

 Julia Ward Howe -1870