war & peace

New Year's in SF was bright and sunny, augmented by attending Kosen-Rufu Gongyo at the Herbst Theater with my fellow SF practitioners (Kosen-rufu: Literally, to "widely declare and spread (Buddhism)." To secure lasting peace and happiness for all humankind"). After, several of us convened to discuss our community, service, music (a big % of this group are performers) at Mama Toby's for lunch. A happy start to the year.
Later, I saw Atonement @ The Clay. The book is far better than the movie and having read it, I dealt better with the slow-slow-slow pace of the movie better than my friend. That said, I thought it did a good job of depicting war...which brought up more compassion for some of my veteran family members. I grew up hearing stories from my Great Aunt about her time in Europe as a head nurse setting up temporary hospitals in Europe and coming home across the Atlantic on a ship (at the same time, my dad was coming home across the Pacific from his duty in the So. Pacific on a ship). No wonder having lived through that she was one of the coolest, most patient people I've known....Anyhow, movie nit-picking aside, I hope, if anything, Atonement reminds people AGAIN, that the fact of most of our survival, even into this age, is so much luck and chance, and of course, opting not to choose feeding the war machine—whether that's personal or global —rather than peace.
Given my penchant for yoga to remind me of the power of choices coupled with the fact of my mother's side of the family's Croatian heritage, I was interested to find today that: Yugoslavia means “land of yoga”. The Yugoslavia my grandparents knew no longer exists, that war-torn area now formed by several small countries....