Today’s Recommendation: Momma Zen

Momma Zen:
Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood
by Karen Maezen Miller
★★★★ 1/2

Combining humor, honesty, and plainspoken advice, Momma Zen distills the doubts and frustrations of motherhood into vignettes of Zen wisdom.

Drawing on her experience as a first-time mother and her years of Zen meditation and study, Karen Miller explores how the daily challenges of parenthood can become the most profound spiritual journey of our lives. Her compelling and wise memoir follows the timeline of early motherhood from pregnancy through toddlerhood. Momma Zen takes readers on a transformative journey, charting a mother’s growth beyond naive expectations and disorientation to finding fulfillment in ordinary tasks, developing greater self-awareness and acceptance—to the gradual discovery of "maternal bliss," a state of abiding happiness and ease that is available to us all.

In her gentle and reassuring voice, Karen Miller convinces us that ancient and authentic spiritual lessons can be as familiar as a lullaby, as ordinary as pureed peas, and as frequent as a sleepless night. She offers encouragement for the hard days, consolation for the long haul, and the lightheartedness every new mom needs to face the crooked path of motherhood straight on.

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review ad 201218

Today’s Recommendation: Awakening Joy for Kids

Awakening Joy for Kids:
A Hands-On Guide for Grown-Ups to Nourish
Themselves & Raise Mindful, Happy Children
by James Baraz & Michele Lilyanna
★★★★★

Awarded the 2016 Nautilus Gold Medal for Parenting and Family!

Spirit Rock founder, author, and teacher James Baraz’s Awakening Joy offers his large and devoted readership a program to gain contentment and happiness by cultivating the seeds of joy within. Here he joins with Michele Lilyanna, a classroom teacher for 25 years, to offer caregivers and children ways to find joy in each day together.

This unique offering nourishes both adults and kids. James shares the practices for the adults—parents, caregivers, and teachers. Michele offers her own experiences as a parent and as a teacher, showing how the themes work with kids, followed by the tried and true lessons that she's used herself in the classroom and at home.

Packed with practices and activities that James and Michele have gathered over their many years of working with thousands of adults and children in retreats, workshops, and the classroom,

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review ad 201006

Daily Insight: Jack Kornfield: Suppose the Buddha .

. .

“Suppose the Buddha gave similarly detailed instructions for using parenting as practice. It would be a nearly identical teaching. We would be instructed to be as mindful of our children’s bodies as we are of our own. To be aware as they walk and eat and go to the bathroom. Then, instead of sitting up all night in meditation, we can sit up mindfully all night when our children are sick. We can be mindful when they’re afraid and when it’s time to hold them or comfort them with loving-kindness and compassion. We can practice patience and surrender. We can become aware of our own reactions and grasping. We can learn to let go over and over and over again as our children age. This is giving generously to the garden of the next generation, for giving and awareness is the path of awakening.”

― Jack Kornfield, Bringing Home the Dharma:
Awakening Right Where You Are

book ad recommendation 200621z

Daily Insight: The Extraordinary Will Take Care of Itself

“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”

― William Martin, The Parent's Tao Te Ching:
Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

book ad recommendation 200619z

Daily Insight: Marianne Williamson: A Healthy Sense of the Sacred

“I believe that the most urgent need of parents today is to instill in our children a moral vision: what does it mean to be a good person, an excellent neighbor, a compassionate heart? What does it mean to say that God exits, that He loves us and He cares for us? What does it mean to love and forgive each other? Parents and caregivers of children must play a primary role in returning our society to a healthy sense of the sacred. We must commit to feeding our children’s souls in the same way we commit to feeding their bodies.”

― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

book ad recommendation 200312z