The Here & Now in a Messy Livingroom

February 8, 2025

For several years BZC’s Parent Practice Group has been cultivating a field together, sharing as we negotiate the minefields of parenthood and guardianship. This coming together as a collective parent body is what has given us the strength and wisdom to hold the particulars of our family, while always plugging back in to all beings. No more exiling, nothing truncated, everything right here right now.  

~Kristen Davis & Flo Lunn, Parent Practice Group Facilitators

Parents meditate in the zendo as their little ones explore the moment in their own way. 

Often as I walked out the door to go to BZC, my son would be sobbing, clinging to my leg, begging me not to leave. Feeling guilty and heartbroken, I would soothe, negotiate and wriggle my way out the door. Once at the zendo, I would relax into my body and breath, leaving the difficulties of parenting behind.
       It wasn’t until the pandemic that I realized I used the Zen Center as an escape. Now I was plopped into my home, as my monastery, with nowhere to run. Out of this, Yoko Ohashi, Flo Lunn  and I formed the Parents Practice Group. We needed the support and nourishment of others in the same position. We wanted to hold each other accountable, hold our feet to the fire of family practice and not run away.
       I sat every morning and evening with the online sangha. The Thursday evening parent group helped me accept and soften to my life. The cries and struggles, giggles and silliness of my family seeped into my zazen practice and the settled peace of my zazen permeated my home. 
       Of course, my practice was right here in the midst of arguing and cajoling to get teeth brushed, of sitting vigil while homework is done, of wrestling and tickling, and feeling exhausted. I had to let go of forms, let go of particular states I equated with practice, let go of selves I thought I had to be. 

Kristen Davis

On my return home with a head full of dharma and joy, my heart would sink meeting the two faces I share my life with. How is it that the teachings that brought me such joy would upon my return home fall flat at my feet through two pairs of eyes that spelled “this is a disruption.” 

A teaching I received early on, as I was mindlessly brushing the zabuton: “Never brush, even a speck of dust, away from you.”

This teaching really came alive at the pandemic when going over there or brushing away, was no longer an option. 

Born out of survival the parent group emerged.

Flo Lunn

See info on this season’s practice group activities here.