Directors' Message
Director's Greeting
You Are Welcome
A long-time friend of Crossings came in for treatment recently. We did not think she was going to survive through last year. Sitting on the table she now spoke of new life, the hopefulness of Spring and the love she felt for those in her family. Today was a day to celebrate even with her tracheotomy and renewed chemotherapy.
Just one month ago she was in the midst of despair and disconnection and the path towards life or death was uncertain. There were no answers that day, only the question: “Where is healing to be found?”
Many sages have spoken of the power of a question in the midst of confusion, despair or suffering. From Rumi, "Look for the answer inside your question." From Rilke, "Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.”
What in the nature of questions makes them useful? Questions open and embrace. They do not sever. They always create space and they hold the possibility that a way for this unique situation will come. They move us to a dynamic within ourselves and they restore the flow of the life force from body to mind to spirit. To question is to be alive; to conclude is to create a closed room. The question brings us to a way we have not yet been able to imagine.
The universe and our life force operate in ways we barely comprehend. So let us keep asking questions of ourselves and our world and let us marvel at nature. When stumped let us say: "Where is healing to be found?" Then let us look and listen.
This Spring/Summer season Crossings offers you a well-tilled garden of classes and workshops to plant your questions in. Come, tend your questions, your spirit, your life and let us see what answers sprout as we attune our eyes, our ears, our hearts to open to new possibilities for life’s fullness to manifest.
Sincerely,
Jane Grissmer, M.Ac., L.Ac., Dipl.Ac.
Co-Director
Alaine D. Duncan, M.Ac., L.Ac., Dipl.Ac.
Co-Director
You Are Welcome
Alaine D. Duncan, Co-Director
A dozen years ago when Jane and I started thinking and dreaming together about the place that was to become Crossings, we were sensing, reading a set of pulses that was rising, but not yet visible.
That pulse now throbs in our culture in vivid and tangible ways – the front cover of Time magazine, the sheer numbers of patient visits to complementary and alternative care providers, and the sense that we are increasingly becoming our patient’s first, rather than last, point of contact for medical services. When I started in practice people came to me as a last resort after seeing every medical specialist they could find. Now they come to me first and ask, “Do you think I need to see a doc?”
My dream for this new and improved Crossings, is that it will be a place for healing and learning – for expanding and connecting for an increasingly larger circle of people. We will offer healing and learning services in a way that serves all of us not just as individuals – but that will leave its mark on our culture and times as well
A more complicated pulse picture beats today than the one that gave rise to the creation Crossings a dozen years ago. Violence and the threat of violence at home and abroad has touched each one of us in ways we could barely have imagined before September 11, 2001. Global warming and our consumer culture have left us not only out of relationship with the earth as our Mother, but out of relationship with our true selves and our true needs.
I want to say on behalf of all of us – Jane and I as Co-Directors, all of our Associates, our Teachers and our Group Leaders that you are welcome here. Each and every one of you and all your relations are welcome here.
You are welcome when you have migraine headaches, PMS, allergies, back pain, fibromyalgia or cancer.
You are welcome when you long for lightness of spirit, when you long for deeper and more meaningful connection with your loved ones, when you long for freedom from the prison of addiction.
You are welcome when you want to learn new skills to cope with life’s stresses — skills like mindfulness meditation, yoga, t’ai qi, qi gong or mind-body skills.
No matter what your route to Crossings, you are welcome.
Our collective mark on our culture and times will grow out of the accumulation of many small steps — small kindnesses, small expansions of the heart. We can do together what it is impossible for any one of us to do alone. By learning and healing together, we might create a world with a deeper foundation for trust, with more creativity, richer connections, deeper attending to the needs of our children and ourselves, and more respect for both the similarities and the differences in the human family.
It has always been important to the next generation that the current one does its healing work. I think that is especially true today. It’s especially important today that we build bridges of peace and understanding, compassion and respect. It’s where world peace starts. It starts with each one of us. It starts with small kindnesses.
Each one of us is important. What we do and how we do it is important.
So, I say, you are welcome even if you think you don’t belong. You are welcome if you think your tennis elbow is too small. You are welcome if you feel you are too stiff, too old, too fat, too mean or too ugly. You are welcome if you feel inadequate or scared to try. You are welcome. You are welcome.
We hold your healing in this big a context. We invite you to hold it that big too.
A hearty welcome to the new Crossings. Please use us. Use us well. Use us for your sake and for the sake of the children and the children’s children.
Written on the occasion of the opening of our Silver Spring Center, February 9, 2003 — and still true today.
