For Immediate Release:
Insight Meditation Community Presents A Weekend With Luisa Montero-Diaz
The Insight Meditation Community of Lewes (IMC-L) presents “Cultivating Our Wholesome Qualities: Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity,” for a Friday evening talk and Saturday retreat with returning meditation teacher Luisa Montero-Diaz, November 6 – 7 in Lewes.
Buddhism holds one can cultivate inherent wholesome qualities, referred to as the Brahma Viharas, that are always accessible and limitless. These divine or heavenly abodes are Lovingkindness (Metta), Compassion (Karuna), Appreciative Joy (Mudita) and Equanimity (Upekkha).
An introduction to these qualities will be the focus of the First Friday Dharma talk at Saint Peter’s Parish Hall in Lewes from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. On Saturday, a full day of practices to cultivate these wholesome qualities will take place from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Biden Center in Henlopen State Park in Lewes.
Luisa Montero-Diaz has been practicing and teaching meditation for over 20 years. She completed the first three-year Community Dharma Leadership program offered by the Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She has been affiliated with Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC since its inception.
Saint Peter’s Episcopal Parish Hall is at second and Mulberry Streets in Lewes. The suggested donation is $5.00. The Biden Center in Henlopen State Park is located at 42 Cape Henlopen Drive in Lewes, 1/2 mile past the Cape May-Lewes Ferry Terminal. The suggested donation is $45.00, which includes lunch. Chairs are provided, and attendees should bring their favorite floor cushions or blankets. Biden center passes are available that morning at the park office. The door opens at 8:30 a.m. For any questions and to help plan for lunch item quantities, please reserve with Nick Edge at 302-945-4094 or edgeconick@comcast.net.
For directions to the Biden center, scheduled events and weekly meditation meetings, please visit www.IMC-Lewes.org.
Starts at 10am!
Car Culture
June 10, 2007 · Filed under Commentary, Saving energy, Transportation
How long has it been since any of us non-ubanites walked to our jobs? For most of us, it’s probably been a long time. Yesterday my sister called me wile she was walking home from work in one of our major metropolitan areas, and it got me thinking about the suburban car culture so prevalent here.
My sister is nearing 50, weighs what she did in college, and is in better shape than many 20 somethings I know locally. City life keeps its residents active, outside, and is a constant cardio workout. Statistics bear this out; the incidence of obesity is lower in dense urban areas than in the suburbs.
It’s not just large cities. My husband grew up in downtown Rehoboth Beach during the 1960s and 1970s. His mother walked to a grocery store, to the doctor, to anything she needed for her family. My husband walked to his school in School View.
With the change in the economic structure of Rehoboth, from a place where average families raised children to a place where real estate prices eventually priced services such as doctors’ offices out of the town, came the end of a family’s ability to meet basic needs without getting into a car.
The recent efforts of developers to create city centers and downtowns in their new developments is laudable and an important step towards correcting the problems created by endless series of strip malls punctuated by cul-de-sac filled neighborhoods.
Creating bicycle access between the local towns is another step in the right direction. The bike path between Lewes and Rehoboth is almost a solution – unfortunately, bicyclists must still, for the most part, drive to one access point or another, thus rendering the path less than useful as means of actual transportation. I hope progress will continue on the path and ultimately make it a true link between Rehoboth and Lewes, so it can actually serve as a means of local travel and eliminate the need to ride a bike on congested Route 1.
It also will require a little action on our part to change our habits. A few years ago, my husband lived in a community wtih a central mailbox about a block and a half away from his home. Although he enjoyed the walk to the box, his neighbors regularly got in their cars and drove to get their mail; the habit of driving everywhere is so pervasive that many of us never think of analyzing our actions to see if there is a different way.
One simple way to reduce our incessant driving is to combine trips for errands. For example – in my little neighborhood, sometimes my neighbors leave the house for short trips 5 or 6 times during the course of a single day. Combining errands into one trip is a much more energy-efficient way to accomplish them.
There is no single solution to our dependence on cars. It will take years of adjusting our design of roads and communities, years of learning to be more efficient when we do use our cars, and years of learning to think first of alternate methods of transportation. Like many green habits, not only does reducing our driving help the environment, ultimately it helps us by keeping us more active and therefore healthier. Everybody wins.
Leave a comment »