James: When we were carving up the CEC pie, trying to embody the spirit that kept us coming back to our practice, we wanted to both capture the essential and be intentional with how we placed it during the year.  As we marched down the calendar, approached its end, after so much attention to practice, mindfulness and concentration, the reverence that springs from beginning to know our shared heart, the arrows we sling at ourself, we wanted to aim at the eternal.  For me, it was the twin siblings of destruction and creation, metabolism and renewal, the shocked smattering of applause after the Ramones stepped off stage at CBGB’s after playing 5 songs in ten minutes, no one really understanding what had happened, but knowing things would never be the same.  Except for one thing. The one thing. The mother of songs, from which vibrations rise and return: our effervescent awareness that anticipates what’s coming, remembers what has passed, creates the music of our lives from what would otherwise be just sound.  For the meditation, we are going to tune it, first inwards, the rise and fall of our inner harmonies, then outwards to what harmonics the planet meters towards us, then just sit as that listening thing that is simultaneously player and audience, always has been, always will be.