We drove from church through whirls of sunlit snow for five hours under the portals floating everywhere with views to a soft blue sky. Never had the wetlands along the New York Thruway looked so starkly beautiful. I thought of stopping to paint out in the 40 mile per hour wind. Once in awhile when the road turned, the tailwind blasts would shove the car left or right for a moment. We thought of getting off the road a time or two, but drove on, amazed and awake, into Massachusetts and over to Stockbridge where our retreat at Kripalu would begin after supper. The icy wind blasted our hair and faces as we unloaded suitcases and shirts, hiking boots, and binoculars.

In the Main Hall Jack started nonchalantly, with much gentleness, as if we had all met somewhere else before and were just picking up again. He read a quote and a poem about kisses--how a kiss needs full attention so don't drive at the same time (Einstein), and how a kiss at an airport can connect everyone nearby (Ellen Bass).

We all have a deep capacity for presence and well-being, he said, and also, "it isn't going to be all that easy to practice because we carry within ourselves the sorrows of the world--the toxic political environment, the racism that hurts us all, war, environmental destruction." And this: "You are an ambassador from the human race and they need you out there. Being here this week is a political act as well as a personal act in a wildly radical way."

Then we sat in meditation. And that was Sunday night. Except that Jack also quoted Thomas Merton somewhere in there: "to surrender to too many demands is itself to succumb to the violence of our times." We came out of the hall and by the lamps around the building we could see that it had begun to snow a little.