As the Season Changes... in Everyday Ramblings

This is an apartment house, very bare bones, built in 1890. It was just off the commercial street. It has eight tiny units. We have a college of Naturopathic medicine in the old neighborhood school nearby and my guess is that it is mostly students there that live here, short-term residents anyway. They are neat busy folks, and the place is always clean. The rooms have got to be incredibly small.

Yesterday afternoon I went to my church office to finalize plans for teaching yoga there in the fall and winter months with the Adult Program Director (who is now a student of mine) and I was sharing some of the history that links my neighborhood with the church as she is making this program year tie in with the celebration of the church’s 150th year.

She has a book I knew of (and had see pages from online) published in 1966 about the church history at 100 years. It is, as everyone points out, certainly all about the men who were involved in building the church.

But! This book, which is a hardback, has photos in it, unlike the new history that just came out. I have it open in my lap as I type this (she loaned it to me) and there is a photo of an elaborate wedding in our small elegant sanctuary with the original tapestry that Anna Belle Crocker designed and made with her sister. The one that burned. Too cool.

I get excited about the oddest things…

There is also a picture of the large wall mosaic that the children of the church made in the 1950’s called “God is Everywhere”. There is even a snowman (Olaf would be proud). We just raised funds to restore that mosaic and I saw it yesterday as well. The actual mosaic, which is on the wall of an interior courtyard of the old church school building that was incorporated into the design of the new very expensive building we use as an event space now and where I currently teach.

In October my class is going to move into an older downstairs room that has benefits and drawbacks. It has a huge ceiling, at least 20 feet. It is bigger and with more students I will need bigger. It has storage so folks can leave their mats over the week and I could put props in there. The floor is solid and there is new carpet at least. The floor in the room I teach in now vibrates quite a bit when trucks or a lot of traffic goes by. The new room is cold though. That will be an issue in winter.

It has big windows on one side that look out onto the courtyard and the mosaic. I hope there will be some lights out there as I will be teaching in the evening.

What is interesting about this all is that there is a woman, not that much older than me, that has been teaching yoga in various workshop type formats in the church for a number of years. She is considered the church yoga teacher. When I originally approached the Program Director about teaching there last year she was all… well…, L. does that. She is revered. I’ve met her; she was in my Build Your Own Theology class.

She is an actively involved grandmother and has backed off from teaching the last few years. I think she taught a couple of one-day workshops on the Chakra System this last church year. And… something I pointed out to the Program Director she is only willing to teach during the day, which makes it a bit challenging for working folks…

Anyway, when they decided to fold my class into the church program guide so that I can make some money teaching, they wanted to check with her first.

She has met now with the Program Director three times and has mentioned that she is feeling “displaced”.

She had a bunch of really critical things to say about the new old room.

Sigh.

All I want to do is teach as many people who can and are willing to come to class. I am open to people taking class wherever and whenever they are able. I think we have it worked out now in such a way where I can keep my current students and weekly class times and add a Wednesday evening class in the late winter long after I have let go of the Caregiver responsibility.

Lots of change afoot in my world. Hopefully one of them is rain. It is on its way.

Last updated August 28, 2015