Hello Folks, 

 

Happy New Year! I'm a little late with my yearly end of the year wishes and have been trying to gather myself together to write one for the past week. The first few days of COVID were, as the kids say, not fun. But after the burning in my lungs and throat settled down, I've felt better and have enjoyed sleeping a lot, eating Jocelyne's amazing food, reading, and in the past few days starting to write again. Thank God Jocelyne and Lili didn't (knock wood) catch anything from me.

 

I actually do quite well locked in a small room. Must be all the ashram training. 

 

As we all do at the end of a year, I spent the few days before I got sick around New Year's reflecting back on the year. Aside from all of the things that happened, projects started and ended, the ups and downs, the most amazing part for us transpired in the third quarter of the year. A random opening of elevator doors, literally, on the 2nd floor of 430 Broome Street led to a 30-seconds-left-at-the-end-of-the-game-75-yard-touchdown; the December 2nd signing of a new lease on the old Broome Street Temple. Rousing standing ovation. A Christmas miracle. The underdogs win. It felt like redemption. I cried after our bank transfer went through: we were returning to Broome Street.

 

Our ability to recapture Broome Street was largely because of private donations that were given early on to make this happen. Our old friend and student Topaz Page Greene and her husband Edmund kicked off our fundraising drive before we even truly got started, with a tremendously generous donation that made us think: “We can do this.” In a span of two months, we raised the $384,000 that we needed for a year of rent in advance, a kind loan for a year of escrow, and some startup costs. We don’t take this lightly. It’s a tremendous privilege to be re-opening the temple, and we enter into not with excitement but a sense of duty and responsibility (and of course with great joy). There are too many people to thank individually here, but a 100% fact of this is that a temple is a team effort, and the team developing here is stellar, selfless, and generous. Thank you. To our new temple board, thank you. 

 

And so, as the year ended, I kept coming back to this overwhelming feeling of gratitude for you all, for each and every student who I know or don’t know who come to class over the past year, to all of you who donated or donated with simply your presence. Grateful for the people who supported and donated to the temple. Grateful for the opportunity. Grateful for trust, and grateful for the sense of responsibility that comes along with trust. When it comes to gratitude, I don’t think the things our gratitude is directed at is important as the feeling of gratitude itself. Try this: feel gratitude for something, and then to let go of the object of your gratitude, and just let the feeling of gratitude remain.

 

I wanted to send something to you at the end of the year. It’s a poem by Ross Gay, called Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude that my buddy Emma sent me last year. The music is by Bon Iver. Please sit back, or lie down, and give it a listen. Put on headphones if you have them, turn off your phone, close your eyes, and listen. I love this poem. I’ve listened to it almost every day (except my COVID fog days) since after Christmas thinking, “This is what I want to send everyone for a New Year’s gift.” It speaks to the simple and profound joys of this world, the pain of loss, and the gratitude that infuses both of those things. Here are some links:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvG3ZCBUiXU

Spotify

 

So, what’s next?

 

Our first class of the year will be on Wednesday, January 12^th. My quarantine ends on January 10^th. We’ll start with a three day per week schedule and gradually increase. All of the classes we normally had, including the ½ intermediate, intermediate, and third series, will all start again, but not quite yet. Give me a week or two to settle in. In-person classes will start when I test negative again. Jocelyne will start meditation classes again, and she'll let us know when she's ready. 

 

Thank you all. We look forward to the next year of on-line and soon in-person classes, and our new programs at the Broome Street Temple.

 

And happy 75^th birthday, David Bowie (and Elvis, 87th). 

 

With love,

Eddie and Jocelyne