It was Monday at the Temple. Our sangha (Buddhist community) meets usually on Mondays at the local monastary. It's not a pagoda or anytihng, it's actually an old farm house which has been well maintained. There's room for walks outside in the garden, there's a shrine room, and the rest of the house is for the use of the monks and their pet dog (an annoying mutt who likes to sit beside you and fart during meditation, when you can't really do anything about him, but I digress..)
There IS a purpose to this experience, I assure you. Get a snack and read on. Some people showed up this Monday who hadn't been there before. They were shown places they could sit, and where the extra cushions were for. After that we all went out for walking meditation, which looks a bit wierd if you haven't seen before, but is a great relief to the ankles ANd the mind after a long time of sitting crosslegged. So they walked with us. After they came back we all filed back inside to the shrine room for a dharma talk, which is basically an open group discussion about whatever comes to mind, though there usually is some sort of common subject. This time it was a sutra, but typically the conversations ramble, and end up being about something totally different, but perhaps someplace you needed to go, as so most conversations. A far cry from the question and answer "Book Studies" I was once used to. I thought about that with some humour as I sat down for this.
We were waiting to get started, and noticed one of our regulars hadn't come back yet, and neither had the new folks. I hadn't really known whether the new folks had would stay or leave, because it was their first time, and oftentimes, first times are last times. Also, it was pretty hot in the shrine room without air conditioning, and attendance naturally goes down in summer. You know the expression that there are no Unitarians in the summertime? Well the same is true for us, a little. We waited to see if anyone would come back. Finally the regular came back. He said something to the effect of "Sorry about that, I was just talking with those folks. They really liked it and wanted to come back"
All at once on several of our faces came this look of worry. It was a very readable look. Had he been proselytizing? That would have been at best considered rude. He caught this and said abruptly "They just had some questions to ask me, that's all."
What is the sound of someone saying "wheww" silently? We got back to our talk. And yet I was chuckling, thinking how far things had come for me, to be worried that a friend might be preaching to someone, not because of what he might be saying, but because he might have not been asked to do so.
Have you ever hit some sort of milestone where you KNEW you had grown from your experience as a witness. What was it?