Important things are in store this week.
I asked for a half-day off this afternoon, but didn’t give specifics.
We’d heard about an interesting event at the Washington National Cathedral this afternoon: A Teaching by His Holiness the Dalai Lama Cultivating Peace as an Antidote to Violence. Sounded like an interesting way to spend the 2nd Anniversary of the September 11th attack
The Cathedral doors open at 2:30 and the event starts at 4 pm – and it sounded like an interesting event to attend – we’d never heard the Dalai Lama speak before. So we decided we could work a half-day, take the metro into town and grab some lunch, then catch a bus uptown to the Cathedral. Simple plan and fun together.
I grabbed Emma at 11, and we took the subway to Farragut West, and walked upstairs to International Square for lunch. 30 minutes later we headed outside
and caught the bus. 30 minutes after that the bus dropped us at Mass Avenue, and we saw a l-o-n-g line of people was already there! we walked 3 blocks to the end of the line and took our place … it was just 1:45!
To shorten the story, we did all get in, but it was packed. We heard chanting – a mix of the Tibetan monks throat singing and the Cathedral choir doing simplesong, with a simple sort of synthesizer backing them. Think Enigma, or Eno … We could hear, but just barely – the sound wasn’t that good where we were, and there were flatscreen digital monitors on some of the stone columns – a very future-retro vision.

Transcript, webcast and official pictures of the event

On a related note – we heard of another respected teacher coming to town –
Thich Nhat Hanh giving a public lecture at the Washington Hebrew Congregation, Sun Sept 14 – 7pm We have tickets for this and are looking forward to hearing him speak.

More info on Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village Retreat Center