One of my favorite moments each year is when I spy the first red leaf in a sea of green woods. It usually happens in mid-July, when fall hasn’t even touched the retail displays, no one is talking back-to-school, and we’re still mid-stream in oppressive heat and humidity.
A hint of fall in the height of summer. It reminds me of the classic yin and yang symbol, with the white dot in the center of the black swirl, and likewise black in the white. It reminds me that every acorn on the forest floor holds the majestic map of a future tree. And it reminds me that our personalities, relationships, and vocations are points on a continuum of never-ending impermanence, like perennial flowers blooming over and over again. They are never exactly the same, yet always layered with accumulated past impressions.
Soon after I began teaching yoga and then serving as Director of Sun & Moon, I realized that my favorite part of the job was the substantive conversations I got to have with students, volunteers, teachers, and community partners – conversations in which I could apply yoga’s spiritual teachings to everyday concerns, from technical malfunctions to the dying and death of loved ones.
Early in the pandemic, I discovered a professional path that would allow me to officially do the thing I’d been winging for years: offer spiritually-inspired comfort and care. So I re-entered graduate school (at age 56!), to earn a Master of Divinity degree and train as a Buddhist-based hospital chaplain. Sitting with patients and families, often on the hardest days of their lives, is a humbling honor, and I embrace it knowing that the seeds for this work were planted years ago in fields of yoga mats, many of which held you and the conversations we shared.
Starting this week, I get to do this work full-time at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, where I’ll be a chaplain resident for the next year. My involvement with Sun & Moon as co-owner alongside Amir will remain meaningful and material – with blogs, workshops, teacher training, and retreats – but the day-to-day operations, along with the marketing, business, and culture-shaping leadership, will be entrusted to Dena Jensen.
Dena has been a beloved and respected teacher in our community for more than 15 years. Her roots at Sun & Moon, like mine, reach back to 2001, and her time here has borne the same fruits of spiritual growth and cultivated compassion that have meant so much to me.
Amir and I feel overwhelming gratitude and great fortune in knowing that operations at Sun & Moon are in such trusted hands.
Thank you for sharing these many seasons with me.
Love,
Annie
