Tag Archives: mindfulness summit

Day 8 in a year of…

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Day 8, July 30, 2016 @9:10 pm

I’ve left my musing for the day too late.  Now, I’m sitting in front of the television with the laptop on my knees.  Sheba insists that we watch television in the living room after supper.  You might think that it is crazy to be controlled by a dog.  But then it is us who has trained her by our own habits.  Dogs are creatures of habit.  So here I sit.  I hope I can think.  I could turn my TV volume down. Sheba has excellent hearing.

IMG_6797The morning started well, considering I had trouble sleeping last night.  I got up, made up, selected my earrings and other jewellery.  I’m experimenting with doing different.  It is ok to do more, even too much.  How else will I learn? There are no wrongs or mistakes in playing and trying out.  I thought about angles, lighting, posture and background for my selfies.  It takes practice to feel comfortable in making faces – even with no one around.  After a week,  it is starting to feel fun.

IMG_6802I don’t know how ideas travel, do you?  Where do they come from.  It popped into my head this morning that I should repeat the Mindfulness Summit.  I did the month long series of mindfulness in October 2015. Each day had a different speaker.  Today, Melli O’Brien interviewed Dr. Mark Williams. It was very helpful and pertinent to my project.

Assessing and writing at the end of today is not a good thing.  I am tired, feeling the heaviness of the heat and humidity.  I can hardly think and type.  But I am doing the best I can.  THE thing is  to show up here in this space each day to tell you how it was.  I hope you are here for me. Till tomorrow.

 

 

 

SURPRISES

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Reverb BB

It’s day 2 of Kat McNally’s Reverb.  The prompt today is:

What surprised you this year?  

What a loaded question!  Everything surprised me this year.  It was as if I had landed from outer space and Earth was foreign terrain.  It was no longer the friendly place I once knew.  I started unravelling like an old worn sweater at the strangeness of it all.  The unravelling sped up as the days passed – like the end roll of toilet paper.  Finally I was limp and helpless like a puddle on the bathroom floor.

Being helpless, I gave up fighting this strangeness.  When there was no more struggle, no more sparring in the dark, I was surprised by my own strength and resources.  Somehow I was able to pick up the stitches and knit myself back together.

It was not an overnight job.  I sat through a month of instructions, listening every day to a new instructor.  It was a most pleasant October as I spent each morning sipping tea with Melli of the Mindfulness Summit and learning what it is to be in the present moment, accepting what is.

It was a hard lesson and difficult knitting.  No double I will forget and unravel again.  But then that is how life is, isn’t it?  Ups and downs.  Flux and flow.  All of life’s surprises, big and small.  Have no worry for me.  I am a muse and as muses go, sometimes I tend to be melancholy in my words.   But I am ever a hopeful muse.  As I end may I say a prayer for us.

May you find peace.  May you find joy.  May you find strength to carry you.  May you find the gift in surprises that bring tears or joy.  And may God be with you always.

 

 

 

THE VERY FIRST OF NOVEMBER

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IMG_3420October over, November beginning – a death and a birth.  I am a little disjointed, somewhat off course.  How to feel?  What to do with this new month?  I am not as blue as I can be, but bluish nonetheless on this grey wet day of November.

I was buoyed by the colours of October, held up by the Mindness Summit.  I had something to look forward to each morning – having tea with Melli O’Brien and her guest. What wisdom would they bring me that day? What a month it had been!  What a wonderful array of speakers.  And what a heart warming ending with Jon Kabat-Zinn.

IMG_2969October and the summit are over.  Now it is time for me to walk the path on my own.  It is not enough to have the knowledge. I have to live it – moment by moment, just as it is. It is much like the advice that Anne Lamott has on writing:  Write down as much as you can see through a one-inch picture frame. Then move to another one-inch frame.  I will have to read her book, Bird by Bird again.  It has many wise instructions on writing and life.

This first day of November is a pause, to rest into the quiet, to ready for a new month of challenges.  What will come up?  Time will tell.  I can only see in today’s picture frame. It is enough.