Sunday Night

Well, it was a great wedding celebration.

Friday night we had the rehearsal and then the rehearsal dinner which was really fun. We all went on one of the chartered boats on Town Lake and had a lovely simple dinner on board. The weather was amazingly nice, the sunset was spectacular and the bats flew right at dusk which was quite stellar. It was a really nice way to spend the evening together and to get in the celebratory mood.

Saturday Kelly and I got up and went to the Famer’s Market which was fun. I am always working –either in town or out of town on Saturday mornings so I am rarely free to do something like that so it felt really special. We got some great produce, some wonderful fresh milk and local honey and late-season peaches.

Then we made our way to The Castle for our group practice. We ahd a really awesome time at practice. We had a wonderful group of yogi’s assembled, all of whom were hard working, easy going and very skillful. We went for backbends like urdhva danurasana, dwi pada viparita dandasana, and eka pada rajakpaotasana with some forays into mandalsana, drop backs, headstand drop overs, padangustha danurasana and some a very interesting ustrasana variation. Fun stuff. My back bends felt great, everyone had a good time and the new space at the Castle is beyond wonderful.

After a shower and a meal, we picked Anne up at the hair salon and went to the wedding venue. I did her makeup and a bunch of Anne’s women friends hung out while she got dressed and waited for the ceremony to start. It was a lovely ceremony with Anne’s good friend and colleague, Tom, officiating.

The ceremony was beautiful, the facility was gorgeous and Anne was absolutely radiant and full of life and love. Here is a link of some images from the weekend that Kelly put together.

Click here to watch.

I really like weddings. (and yes, I always cry at them!) As Anne and Jeff took their vows, I found myself contemplating love, marriage and the courage it takes to commit oneself to such a proposition over the course of one’s life. Weddings are so sweet and so inspiring because they are full of optimism, hope and dreams. I definitely experienced a sense of renewal and gratitude for my own marriage and also for the wonderful community of people here that I am sharing my life with. I mentioned it in our yoga practice yesterday but I suppose it bears repeating here.

You see, I think it’s an amazing thing in this life to develop a loving relationship with ourselves and to develop a friendship with our self that is loving and kind. I also think that it is a wonderful good fortune to develop a relationship with someone else that we want to share our life with. And it is, just as wonderful and important to have loving friendships and supportive people within a community with whom to share the love of practice, the love of yoga and the love of transformation. After all, each one of us has a family of origin but what is very cool is that as we walk the path of yoga, we also get a family of choice. We get to choose a group of people to surround ourselves with that will nurture, support and uphold us. For some of us, our family of choice includes our family of origin and certainly, for others, not so much. (And obviously, these dynamics may be worthy of a post all their own, but I digress…) Anyway, as adults, we get to craft a family of choice and participate in a community that can harvest the best of our history and help us transcend our own limitations.

So for me, this weekend was really a celebration of the love that comes from family- of origin and of choice-- and the beauty of growing and loving in a community of people committed to some wonderful and inspiring ideals such as marriage, fidelity and faith.