What inspired me to start the Bone House
Randolph Friends Meeting House
I want to share a story with you about one of my inspirations behind creating the Bone House...
Back when I was enrolled in my Kundalini Yoga Teacher training in NYC (back in 2006!) I would go back and forth between the city where I was living, and out to suburban New Jersey where my family lives. I had just returned from a retreat in Italy with Guru Dev Singh, which was 6 days of DEEP Kundalini Yoga meditation, (plus some espresso drinking and walking around Assisi.) What happened to me in that retreat was that a space of silence opened up very wide inside of me. It was a space of the sacred where it became (for a time) automatic to drop into meditation and contemplation. That space had never quite been there before. So I started to look around me and the world looked different- it offered things I hadn't seen before. What popped out was how other groups were relating to a contemplative space in some way. It made me curious and it made me want to experience it in different ways.
When I was back in New Jersey, I made a trip over to Randolph, the town where both of my parents grew up. When I went to visit the graves of my grandparents, I noticed that there was a well-built building right on the graveyard that was a quaker meeting house. A sign posted on the door said that there was a meeting held in that historic building on the first Sunday of each month. I marked my calendar and showed up promptly at the simple building on the appointed Sunday. The Quaker style of building is spare but quality craftsmanship~ all built from wood. The building was so old that the glass itself had little divots, imperfections and warbles in it. I sat on a stiff wooden bench, and it felt a little bit like being in a sauna. The only instruction was that we were to be silent and listen for the word of God. Well, time went by, and no one spoke a word. I was in a room of complete strangers. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes went by and no one said a word. Yet the air continued to get thicker and thicker in a way that was so palpable! It distinctly remember it was like it was getting more and more pregnant. Finally at about 45 minutes someone broke the silence. They told a tiny little vignette about a Blue Jay who visited their bird feeder and how that had felt like the presence of God. Then what followed what more brief, non-pretentious, koan-like shares that just rose up out of people spontaneously all around the room at a popcorn-like interval. This went on, and it all that the lovely feeling that it rose out of the space that we had all taken the time to so carefully create and charge. At a certain point the sharing was brought to and end, and then there was a reflection period. I stayed for that and then for a little potluck and then I wandered off to my car.
This experience in the Quaker meeting house made an indelible impression on me and ever since I've wanted to bring a little bit of the magic of that moment into my work. It was entirely significantly that this was happening on land that was directly adjacent to my family's graves! Stephen Jenkinson talks about the importance of the Bone Yard and how when people used to be more nomadic, they would travel with the bones of their deceased and always bury them again beneath where they were living. That our elders are sustaining us in their life and then also in their death. I hold this description so dearly inside of myself.
The Bones are the essence. The Bones tell us who we are. When we die and everything about our life passes away, the bones are the last thing to go. When we know something to be true, we know it in our bones.
My intention is to create a space where the essence reigns, and where you feel deeply at home. You don't need to show up already knowing what you are going to say. You show up ready to listen, to feel into your body, and to have realizations in the moment. Remember those 45 minutes of silent listening in the Quaker meeting that made the air thicker and thicker? We all take part in creating an energy field that is full of wisdom and energy that catalyzes our own process. The group relates by structured agreements, which results in an experience which is safe, supportive, patient and emergent.
This is not a performative space. It's a space to slow down and bear witness to what comes up.
Are you ready to sit in this kind of circle?
The outside of the Randolph Friends Meeting House. My family’s graves are off to the right about 150 paces.
