Tag Archives: Youth

Spare Change Spotlight: Yoga Gangsters

Terri Cooper, founder of Yoga Gangsters, once said that the most important thing we can teach to at-risk youth is how to breathe before acting.  This gift, of being able to take a moment before we act, of being able to live beyond fight or flight, is perhaps the greatest gift the universe has given human beings. Yoga Gangsters works with at-risk youth to cultivate that divine gift, and here is your chance to help them.

 

On Sunday, September 22, 2013 on the 7th Level of the Lincoln Road Parking Complex at 1111 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, Yoga Gangsters will host their 10th Annual Yoga Gangsters Challenge. At this is a fundraising event,  over 500 expected yoga practitioners and supporters with breathe through 108 Sun Salutations. Doors open at 9 am, yoga begins at 10:30 am.

If you are not in the South Florida Area, there is also an event on the 28th of September in Las Vegas and if you are not in those places no worries! You can donate now and join the Searching Sophia’s Pockets team. Donate 1$ for each Sun Salutations and then we will all breathe through our Sun Salutations together as a global community of spiritual sojourners.

So join us now and help to give the gift of breath youth across the United States, and maybe eventually, across the world.

 

 

Waves

By: Autumn Elizabeth

Does it ever seem like Sophia’s directions come in waves? For me it does. Just when I think I have a grip on the direction God wants me to take in my life, something changes and everything looks different.

As I prepare for a trip back to the U.S., back to places where I had a different life, I can’t help but look back on the paths I almost took. At one time I heard God calling me to do work at my church in Saint Louis with youth, and so I did for 5 years. Then I left them when I eloped with my now ex-partner and moved to another city and participated in two years of national service with AmeriCorps. That is what I felt called to do.

I have made many decisions in my life, followed my heart and my understanding of the Holy Spirit to many cities, and a few countries. Sometimes I worry that my path has been too scattered, too varied  too different. But then, when I am feeling most lost on my path, I stumble across these words from Paula D’Arcy’s book Gift of the Red Bird:

Ultimately God remains a mystery to me.  Sometimes friend, or father,mother, listener, guide, lover, distant,…silent.  Always he [or she] says, WILL YOU FOLLOW ME? Even if there’s nothing to give you stability? Even if you can’t understand where I am leading you? Even if you must wait for things you desire? Even in the darkness?

These words remind me that the voice of Holy Wisdom is not always clear, does not always come when we want it most. We must follow the voice of Sophia the way surfers follow waves. We must wait for the right one and then go with it as far as we can.