Live and Rejoice!

by Pat Mulroy

Live and Rejoice!

After reading Henry David Thoreau in The Community Table 1/30/25

Simple living, purity of purpose.

The wind is still howling as I sit and ponder with Jean what to post, what reflection is right for the day, the time we are living in. The books are all around, paging through the possibilities. I savor this time with the authors who I have been introduced to - diving deeper into who they are and what their writing has meant to them and those who have experienced the call to their writing.

On this day, the Henry David Thoreau book fell into view - a gift from Sally with pictures from our lives, our family, and dear friends sprinkled among the ponderings of his time on Walden Pond. I felt that connection - to his words, my life, and the people I love and care for.

“To be calm, to be serene! There is the calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind; there is the calmness of a stagnant ditch. So is it with us. Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps. Such clarity! obtained by such pure means! by simple living, by honesty of purpose. We live and rejoice.” June 22, 1851

New Suns Will Arise: From the Journals of Henry David Thoreau, Edited by Frank Crocitto Pg. 60

Substack 1/30/25

As I returned from a yoga class with the passage carrying me through the deep stretching, the quiet of movement in community - I felt the connection at my core. Not because I was looking at a pond or living in solitude. On the contrary, the simple task of finding a passage with Jean and the act of moving purposefully in a group of strangers who have become community, lifts my spirits.

I can live! And rejoice!

I can rejoice in the kindness of Sally as she curated the pictures of the people I love, to place them artfully in the old book. The love and connection is a gift that has lasted long past my 60th birthday.

I can live! In the gift of gentle movement I give myself which has made me stronger and has connected me to a beautiful community at Boundless Yoga. A community that has been built intentionally to welcome ALL.

I live, I rejoice, I learn.

As we finished dinner and transitioned toward the end of our day, I made my way to finishing the Henry David Thoreau post. I ‘googled’ him, and learned a lot. He wrote Civil Disobedience in response to Slavery and the Mexican-American war. He saw both as an arm of government that was good for the few who were in power. I want to learn more. Thoreau’s writing inspired many people and movements, like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights Movement, and more.

Thoreau’s ideas about civil disobedience were first spread in the late 1900s by Henry Salt, an English social reformer who introduced them to Gandhi. And Russian author Leo Tolstoy was important to spreading those ideas in continental Europe, wrote literature scholar Walter Harding.

I want to learn more. I want to resist the unjust laws being scattered like confetti - I don't think they are even laws, but I will challenge the chaos in any way I know how - inspired each day by beautiful words and prose, acts of defiance, time in the beauty of nature and love. I will love and rejoice when the oligarchy is demanding compliance. In the words of my friend Megan, No. It's a complete sentence. And I say NO to chaos and meanness of spirit.

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We will meet for the Community Table Monday, February 2rd at 4:30 PM ET. Contact us for information HERE.

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Learn More About Circles of Courageous Commons HERE