During the month of August, we had a number of events.

One was a women's weekend retreat.

Another was a men's day long that my husband, Jonathan Faust, led.

And at one point during the day long, just to share with you, he had the men on the floor

doing a body scan, a mindful body scan, and he invited them to lift their legs up and

have something under their legs as they did so.

Well an elderly woman was looking through the glass doors at the group.

And our manager, Steve, happened to be out there and so she asked him, hey, is that a

Lamas class?

I loved it, I loved it.

Just to let you know that when Steve has managed a lot of our retreats, and this is maybe

the first men's retreat he had managed, and he let the men know that this time no one

had asked him as manager what to wear about directions or if they might bring flowers

or a vase, so it was a different kind of retreat.

So we've been doing a series that are described in the Buddhist scriptures as the Brahma

Viharas that really translates to the divine abodes, and they are the places of awakening,

the expressions of awakening that occur naturally, that really express our heart and awareness,

and the first which we explored is loving kindness, and loving kindness arises naturally

when we're present and opening to the beauty and the goodness of this life.

There's a natural response of loving kindness, and that in that particular class we explored

what gets in the way from us really opening to this expression of the heart and what cultivates

it.

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