Peace

HappySpirit @ Home

/ Hilary Mandel / 6 Comments

I’ve decided to quit going to yoga.  That is, I’ve decided to stop paying to go to yoga classes. Instead of going to yoga, I’m starting to practice yoga. Maybe even starting to live yoga a little. It’s pretty awesome having a happy spirit with me in my own living room.

I’ve written about yoga before – it’s a practice that has been quite beneficial to me over the last two decades of my life, starting from the time I moved from LA to Oakland and had a 9-5 job in The City (that damn City that’s so pretentious, its residents just call it “The City”). (I love that place, goshdarnit.) Continue reading →

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Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing

/ Hilary Mandel / 1 Comment

I love these candles.

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These candles that are almost all burnt, off to the side of me on the kitchen table, on this first Friday night since we moved the clocks forward. It’s 7:47 and almost dark, three stars in the sky, if ya know what I mean. And the Sabbath lights are lit in my kitchen window.

I lit ‘em, yep, I did.

And I said a little prayer. And then it was Shabbat. The Sabbath. Or Shabbos if you prefer. As in Good Shabbos.

The two candles are sitting in ceramic holders I bought in Jerusalem during my junior year of college at Hebrew University over thirty years ago. (Geez, that’s crazy. OVER thirty years.) Candlestick holders were a relatively easy relic for a naïve American 19-year-old girl with limited Hebrew skills to purchase from vendors in the Old City. Continue reading →

Riding the Peace Train

/ Hilary Mandel / 6 Comments

italian_peaceflagAs I begin to write this, I am 49-1/6th years old to the minute.  I love being this age.  I love that I have memories of being a child in the 60’s, a teenager in the 70’s, a young adult in the 80’s, a 30-something in the 90’s, and an early-middle-ager in the 2000’s (or whatever you call that unpronounceable decade).

My undergraduate degree in History left me with many gifts, among them a profound appreciation for the power of the individual to impact the course of the world throughout their lifetime, and the simultaneous influence the world has on each of our own life experience. Continue reading →