Happy Solstice

*One of the first things I did this morning (and the past 21 days) is to pull a slip from the advent "calendar," and when I did I noticed I only had four slips left, one was missing! I quickly counted all the slips again. What should I do? Should I skip today? But I wanted to pull one today. But then I wouldn't have one on the 25th. I really wanted another slip.

Well, I turned on my computer to email my friend who initiated this activity. I wanted to let her know I was short, not to complain, but rather to let her know how much I was obviously enjoying this activity because I really wanted my last slip.

I never wrote that email though because I had one message in my inbox. It was from a woman named Elizabeth Harper. She asked people to send her inspirational messages last week which she would seperate into 21 different messages for the solstice. Then she'd label them 1-21 and we'd "intuit" a number to get the messages meant for us.

So instead of emailing my friend, I opened my message (which became my advent slip for the day). It filled me with positive energy and enthusiasm.
Here are a couple of my favorite

**Dear Past: Thank you for your lessons.
Dear Future: I'm READY.
Dear God (or life or whatever you want to call it): Thank you for another chance.

***"At the center of your being, you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want"

Lao Tzu


****I called someone for work today who was angry and frustrated. It wasn't my fault and his frustration was totally understandable, but I still absorbed his energy and no longer felt Ms. Happy Go Lucky Solstice Woman when I got off the phone. So I clicked on a new Jason Mraz video and listened to him sing. One part of me thought, "I should be working right now," another part of me thought, "No, I am clearing my energy so I don't pass this on." And it did. It took two songs and then I felt better and then I looked up

*****and there were beautiful light snowflakes falling from the sky. The first day of Winter snowflakes. (It's MN, but we don't have any snow). It only lasted a moment, within minutes they were gone, but I looked up, so I saw them.

I love to read.

• I find this page beautiful. Just looking at it gets me excited about reading.

• I'm thinking about making the previous link my 2012 book list. It would get me to try some new things, like Ender's Game. Just the cover in itself is enough to make it completely unappealing. However I've already enjoyed five on this list (and tried two more but didn't get into them.) So that would leave two a month for 2012. My goal would not be to read them all, the goal would be to try all the books on the list and hopefully find some unexpected enjoyment.
• El Mas Hermoso - I was pleasantly surprised by this children's book today. All the animals in the jungle are deciding who will be the next king. The tortoise suggests doing something different and picking the most beautiful. Everyone agrees and goes to make themselves beautiful. The deer thinks he would look great with the lion's mane so he exchanges his antlers for them, and other animals do similar things. But no one wants anything from the camel, the camel knows he is ugly...In the end the camel is chosen as the most beautiful because while everyone else was stressed out trying to look good, a little bird helped the camel see how beautiful his own eyes were and this made him very happy. And the happy animal was the most beautiful! Amen.
• Well, I've already got three related to books so I will just keep going. I am reading Jesus: What He Really Said and Did by Stephen Mitchell. These are two favorites from today's reading. Jesus said, "How can you say, 'I have kept all the commandments'? Isn't it written in the Torah, You should love your neighbor as yourself? Yet many of your countrymen are dressed in rags and dying of hunger, while your house is filled with abundance, and none of it goes out to them. (81)"
  
• A man says to Jesus, "'But if it is possible for you to do anything take pity on us and help us.'
  Jesus said to him, ''If it is possible!' Anything is possible when you believe it is' (66)."
  
  
  
  

Discover Inner Peace with Shaun the Sheep

1 - On Sunday I was at a library in a different part of town, a multi-lingual part of town. I figured they would have a good Spanish section there so I browsed. This jumped out at me - El mejor lugar del mundo es aqui mismo. Oh this title in itself brings me such joy. I wasn't even sure I would check out the book, I figured the title in itself was enough. However, I did and it is a delicious read that I have been savoring. I often find myself stopping to absorb, so I am only on page 50 (the pages are very short). Anyway, this book has been a gratitude the last three days so to be specific I will say page 49 which was so delightful I had to stop after reading it. (I don't know that I've ever found a book to be delightful before.)

2 - I just looked it up to see if the library had other titles by the authors. One of the subheadings related to this book is "Peace of Mind -- Fiction."

3 - Well that was a really cool subheading. I clicked on it to see what other books are in the category. I am afraid it is the only one :). However there is also a "Peace of Mind -- Humor" category (it also only has one title). I clicked on that and it was
Feng Shaun : discover inner peace with Shaun the sheep. This is an adult non-fiction book (click on my link and see the cover). I requested it.

4 - It is pretty rare for me to get excited about a guy simply based on looks - maybe because he was good looking AND doing yoga or good looking AND at the Celtic service. Voices, on the other hand, are another matter! I had a completely simple and non-exciting phone call with a man for work today and his voice in itself energized me,

5 - not quite as much as coming across Shaun the sheep though.

El mejor lugar del mundo es aqui mismo
The best place in the world is right here.
Amen.

Fuji Thrill

Throughout college I often went biking on the gravel roads outside town on my friends' mountain bikes. My bike was at home, a 10-speed I’d bought in 5th grade, not appropriate for gravel. The summer after finishing college, I worked at a camp in Northern Minnesota. My Dad bought me a used bright green mountain bike – my Fuji Thrill.



Last Saturday I went to a Mason Jennings concert. He talked about what led to one of his songs, he reflected on what memories might pop into his mind as his favorites right before he’d die. Almost none (or none) of those memories were of times when he was alone. Standing there in the audience I too tried to scan through favorite memories and found this was not the case for me, I had many where I was alone – unless of course you count my bike.



One that came to mind was during that first summer. All the staff at the summer camp either had Saturday or Sunday off. I’m not exactly sure what everyone else did on those days – I heard the bar mentioned or going to town for a movie. I, on the other hand, would take out my beloved topo map, scout a route and go biking on old logging roads.



This summer was also the first I had my own car and therefore could, in a way, define for myself how and where I wanted to spend my time. Define in a way who I was and what I enjoyed. I don’t have many specific memories from those bike rides, but there are a couple: biking through a bramble of wild blueberry bushes and “discovering” a lake without any lake front property. It is difficult to put words to that last one. The gravel road did not touch the lake; somehow I was drawn to walk through the woods to it. It was at that moment I realized I had “discovered” this lake. There was no lakeshore property, no roads alongside, no trails, no path (except most likely the deer one that led me to it). It was incredibly beautiful. I realized this is how lakes were meant to look and I also realized how rarely I had seen a lake in this way.

The Lake

So though I’ve been on a couple of Sierra club bike rides where people told me, “You are doing a lot of extra work with that heavy bike,” and the squeaking the brakes made was really loud and kind of embarrassing (they worked fine) and I always seemed to move more slowly than almost everyone else, and I pretty much always ride on pavement now – I still haven’t given up my mountain bike.

Then last summer it started having this annoying problem. Whenever I was going up a hill I would have to downshift into a really easy gear or it would slip (which could be dangerous if I was trying to cross a street.) It is probably (?) relatively easy to fix – maybe a new chain, but I don’t know how. Also I’d been thinking about getting a road bike for a while, because it was more work to ride. In 2010 my brother found a road bike he lets me use at the thrift store. So I didn’t end up riding my Fuji Thrill at all this year.

Even though we need to put the bikes in for the winter and it is taking up needed space in the garage, I still didn’t want to get rid of it. I knew I should though, so I did some research about bike donation. I found a place in Minneapolis called Full Cycle that gives paid internships to homeless youth to teach them about bike maintenance. After watching their video my heart became so happy with the thought that this would be my bike’s new home.

So today I am grateful for my bike and all the beautiful places it took me, exercise it gave me, and fresh air it exposed me to. And even more so I am grateful to appreciate this precisely because I am giving it away. Though it feels a little sad, it is through letting go that I can feel how wealthy I am.

Point Positive

I skimmed through my whole blog the other day. I hadn't been keeping track of what poems I'd posted (and therefore are considered "published") and I was making a list. I felt refreshed by all the positive focus I've made the last year and a half, and at the same time knew this is only a partial reflection of who I am. I have been feeling concerned about humanity's future on this planet recently, which comes and goes with time (not that the reasons for concern come and go, it's just that sometimes I get more bogged down in them than others.)

I went river rafting once. It was a pretty tame experience, but there was one piece of wisdom that has stayed with me, "Point positive." We were told to focus on where we wanted the boat to go. We were not to fixate on the large boulder that might be on our path, but rather where we wanted to go instead - where our attention was drawn was where we would end up.

This is a lesson I employ daily in my life, sometimes with more and other times with less success. And I guess ten years later, this is the whole point of this blog.

***

I have what most people (including myself) would consider an "unimportant" job. When my friend called me today with something important to discuss, it was easy to set aside to listen. In fact, I was grateful that I had neither a conflict of interest nor a moment's hesitation in being able to do so.

***

The Telling on The Story - one of those positive points today. The first story took me to a place where I stopped everything, simply listened and was moved to tears.

***

Compound Interest

• I'm not a big math person, but sometimes (on the rare occasions that I start doing some) I end up enjoying it. Today I was helping my cousin (a college student) with her homework. First we were figuring out annual percentage yields and compounding interests (which made me want to go invest some money). Then we were trying to figure out how much gas would cost at 1970 and 1974 prices with inflation. If our answers were correct the 1970 correlation was close to $5 ($4.75 or something) and the 1974 correlation was over $8.

• I found that gas question fascinating.

• While working on the homework my cousin would sometimes start whining about how long this was taking or hard it was or... This was not enjoyable to me. Finally, I told her she needed to start making the math positive or I was going to go do something else. This actually worked really well and she started saying things like, "I'm really looking forward to the next problem." I had to remind her a few times, but overall I enjoyed helping her so much more when her attitude was positive. It was definitely infectious.
  
• For the second month in a row there was a very attractive man (who may or may not be single, but at least wasn't there with someone) in a setting that feeds me spiritually (the Celtic service I like.)
• I asked the woman he sits by, who very conveniently happens to (if you stretch the definition) be an acquaintance, who he is. "He is my son," she said with a big smile.
  

People Were Made To Walk

#3071 - I started feeling the desire to get a massage in July, it had been three years since my last. Three months later I was still thinking about it but I hadn't taken action. While volunteering at a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) one of the farmers asked me, "Do you like massages?" I was stunned, all I could say was, "Yes." Maybe she was asking because they were going to give me a massage gift certificate as a thank you gift for the volunteering I'd done this year? And if that was the case, if I could pick any thank you gift, that is the one I would pick! How does that work?

The gift certificate arrived today.

#3072 - I've gone to the same yoga studio for a few years, today is the first time I walked there.

#3073 - The fact that I wanted to walk there and after my class (yoga nap) I wanted to walk home.

#3074 - How powerful the mind/attitude/energy is. I am fascinated by this again and again. For example, not liking my bedroom walls for a few years and then suddenly I decide to I repaint it and it's done within two weeks. Or today - not wanting to walk to yoga for a few years and then suddenly today I do it. It is interesting to me how the only thing we really have to change is our mind, and that doesn't necessarily make it an easy task.

#3075 - "People were made to walk." (Thought I had on my way home.)