LOVE IS A VERB
February 22, 2022
“Through … loving actions, you expand your heart and grow your capacity to love.” – Sheryl Paul
A Moment with Stephanie
Dear Friends-
Each month, here and in our online community, we focus our conversations and practices on a topic. For February, we have chosen the theme of “love is a verb.” This short sentence has been used for book and song titles, in addition to blogs and other publications. We chose this theme because our mindfulness practices teach us that we can grow our capacity to generate and receive love, compassion and empathy. They are not passive feelings that happen to us, but are qualities and actions that we can grow and feed.
This past month we lost one of the greatest mindfulness teachers of our time, Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote prolifically about how to live a mindful life and at the core of many of his teachings was love. He wrote, “If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love.”
Will you join us this month in our Awaken Practice Community as we explore how we can enact love as a verb? Dr. Darrell Rubin and I kickstarted this month’s posts with a short conversation that we recorded on what this means to us. You can join here if you have not already.
From the journey,
Stephanie
How Can Awaken Pittsburgh Support Your Mindfulness Practice?
Online Guided Mindfulness Meditations
Awaken Pittsburgh is offering monthly guided meditations open to anyone! This is a chance to practice in community together.
Each session follows the same format: introductions, a period of guided meditation, and then a chance to support one another, discuss how our meditations are going at home, and ask any questions we have about practice.
March – Practices will focus on our monthly theme: “Being our own best friend”
Wednesday March 9th 7:00-8:00pm
Saturday March 12th 9:30-10:30am
Click here to join us!
Mindful Connections™ for Wellness
9 Weeks of Exploration:
The program is offered for 16 CE hours of social work continuing education through co-sponsorship of the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work.
Mindful Connections is Awaken Pittsburgh’s proprietary program designed to help you create a space for mindfulness and meditation in your own life. We are adapting it here to provide tools to deal with the stress and uncertainty during this unprecedented time of physical distancing. You will learn tools to help you stay focused and grounded and, in turn, positively impact your relationships with others.
9 Wednesdays 6:30pm-8:00pm via Zoom online video conferencing: March 23 – May 18
Find out more and register here.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT
We’d like to thank the following foundations for their support of our work through grants: The Opportunity Fund, The Pittsburgh Foundation’s Holistic Living Grant, The Mary Hillman Jennings Foundation, and the Richard King Mellon Foundation. These grants will support us in expanding our staff, services and programs. We are very grateful for the chance to increase our impact on our region.
HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT OUR WORK?
Do you make purchases through Amazon.com? If you shop through smile.amazon.com and choose Awaken Pittsburgh as your charity, Amazon Smile will donate to us! It costs you nothing and helps to support our work. But you have to choose us! Sign in to smile.amazon.com on your desktop or mobile phone browser. From your desktop, go to “Your Account” and select the option to “Change your Charity.” Or, from your mobile browser, select “Change your Charity” from the options at the bottom of the page.
Donations of any amount are always much needed to continue to bring mindfulness practices to folks who cannot afford them. Did you know that you can make recurring monthly donations to support mindfulness coming to more folks in our community who can’t afford it? Check out how to do it here.
