I tried to draw her as she was giving the talk on the importance of community. Referring to that story where Buddha himself says spiritual friends are the whole of your practice, not the half.

I am in a bad mood and say “pshaw!” Or something like that. I’m thinking in my wordless mind something from a gentler decade when exclamations like” Bullshit” we’re yet to be dreamed of.

I couldn’t quite get her face down but the statue looming over her was easy to get. Her head was drifting beneath the grand stone giant like a delicate moon made of barely illuminated paper.

There she was in her calm authority. Both of them, real and stone, representing this group consciousness which by definition allows no one to raise higher than the group.

I in my ppshaw say, who was with Buddha under the tree? Who was with Jesus in the desert? I’ll tell you who, no one.