I’m grateful today for this community of online/telephone meditators called Telesangha, and for our teacher Cynthia Wilcox. Cynthia has been leading this half-hour morning meditation virtually every weekday since September 6, 2016. We are in our fifth year doing this together. Just a couple of the meditators have been there since the beginning, and more have been there almost as long, and some are fairly recent in the past year. Altogether there are about 18 of us, coast to coast and two in London. It varies day to day how many of us are on the call; there were times in the first year or two when there might be only three or four of us.

You can get to know someone pretty well, and care about them pretty deeply, with just a few words every few days, consistently over several years. We’ve been through some milestones together, including one woman having her first baby, several deaths in various families, health crises, travels (including one fellow calling in at two a.m. from Australia), moves, accomplishments, and breakups. It’s a genuine community, with a lot of love and concern among us, even though most of us have never met in person, or even seen pictures. Just voices, and a committed intention to meditate daily.

(I’m grateful for the technology that allows us to gather from around the world in one virtual space, day after day. (How I’ve come to rely on the world wide web through the years!) I’m grateful for the electricity that allows me to turn on a computer every day and connect with the world in any way I wish to, and grateful to get my electricity from the sun, and grateful to have a computer, and…)

Cynthia teaches in the Insight tradition of Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield, and also leads embodiment meditations in the style of Judith Blackstone. Certain days we have a recurring focus: Tuesday is Embodiment, Thursday is Central Channel, Friday is some kind of Heart meditation. Mondays and Wednesdays the meditation responds more or less to the checkins of participants. I am always grateful for the community (the sangha, on the telephone = Telesangha), and some days I’m especially grateful for the meditation, and for the kind, wise heart of our guide, whose articulate counsel this morning helped me skillfully navigate a fraught situation.