MMTCA Mid May check in

 "When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on."

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

I hope this mid-month check in finds you safe, healthy, hopeful, and practicing Tai-Chi and related arts, especially RELAXED arts! It's been over 60 days since I taught class in person, but who's counting.

As it stands, we will be closed for the rest of May. The guidelines not only warn of six feet of separation, but they caution about duration in other's presence. That means class indoors is out of the question for now. Unless there is a major breakthrough, I will stay closed for June as well. With that being said, I have filmed a bunch of lessons, have more outlined and ready, and you will be receiving them in your e-mail. I will plan a Zoom lesson for June. and do some live-time lessons with you.

Julie is now sending out the videos and lessons. Let her or I know if you aren't getting them. She is doing a great job of maintaining contact and teaching Zoom lessons. Thank You Julie! Julie, Margo, and Robert have been incredible help in filming ,and I thank them from the bottom of my heart. Let me know if there are any forms or practices you'd like to see.

Book suggestion= I don't know how I missed this one, it was published in 2012, and it's awesome!

The Cheng School Gao Style Baguazhang Manual by Liu Fengcai

Speaking of books, my second edition of Real Gold is SO CLOSE!!!! I have lots of additions, photos and more in this edition. Master Choi is also involved, which is so exciting. Stay tuned!

A shameless plug for Ragweed Forge, where I get my throwing axes and such. E-mail Redbeard and see what he has!

ragnar@ragweedforge.com

https://ragweedforgestore.com/

I'll be incommunicado for a few weeks in both May and June. If you need to get in touch, have a Tai-Chi emergency, or just need to talk, please contact Julie, Margo, Fred, or John S.

Once again, I am humbled and in awe of your generosity, care, support, concern, and respect! The tuition, notes, cards, and e-mails make me feel totally connected to you all. Thank you!

A bow from the waist,
-Ray

"The most important word in the English language is hope."

-Eleanor Roosevelt

 What to Remember When Waking

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, movable and frighteningly honest world

where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

-- David Whyte