I am just back from a two-week safari (Swahili for “trip”) to South Africa. What can I say? It was impressive and I learned a lot.
Yesterday I pulled aside the curtain of jetlag and looked at my pictures. Animals in Kruger National Park, flora and scenery in Cape Town, and the craggy southern tip of Africa that forms a dramatic end to the continent. Here are a few. Continue reading
It is a bright winter day. I meditate with my eyes open because I like to see the sun slanting in the windows, outshining the fire in the woodstove. Both make me happy. I can’t help see that the sunshine reveals a layer of dust on everything. That, too, makes me happy because it is Saturday, and I will think of my mother as I move through the house at her deliberate pace, getting rid of the dust. From early childhood I always helped her with the Saturday cleaning ritual.
Sun, fire, housecleaning. These are part of my treasure trove of mystical experiences. It is why I call myself a practical mystic. Mystical experiences are never far away, always accessible. I just have to be open to them.
What is mysticism, anyhow? A direct experience of the Divine, that’s the simplest definition. My mystical secret is that not all mystical experiences are big, transcendent experiences of Oneness. They come in different sizes. Small, Medium, Large. Today it’s the God of small things that I’m experiencing. Continue reading
Last Sunday in church I was in charge of children’s time during the worship service. I wanted to show the kids some photos so I made some prints to show them when they gathered up front, but I also had slides ready to be projected so the whole congregation could see.
That is, I thought I did. When it came time to show the pictures there was a big blank on the screen and a lot of scrambling by the A-V crew. Nothing. One of them was seen on the high balcony catwalk where the projector sits. “What’s he doing up there?” a friend told me she asked her husband. “Praying,” he said. Continue reading
Sometimes I feel like retirement has allowed me to become appallingly lazy. But really, it is just revealing to me what life might have been like all along if I had been able to obey the preferences and rhythms of my human self.
Most people can’t afford to live like natural human beings but, instead, we have to be superhuman. We have to do more than we are built to do, exceed our capacity, and live with the consequent stress. Continue reading
I was proud of myself for getting my year-in-review letter out to friends and family on January 1. My goal in the past has been to send it sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I almost never succeed in doing that. So I have cut myself some slack and now just call it a New Year letter. But I try to touch on the highlights of the past year, along with a verbal snapshot of my family’s current state of mind and activity.
Although I love to blog, this kind of letter always feels like a chore because I hate to summarize. I hate to summarize, in turn, because I have a terrible memory, and I mean terrible. Continue reading
The little family came for Christmas. The resemblance to the ancient family was purely coincidental. The daddy’s name was Joseph, the mommy was pregnant, tired and uncomfortable. And my role was something like the Innkeeper’s, trying to make everybody comfortable and content even though the rain was coming down hard on Christmas Eve and expectations were high–especially my own and those of the 4-year-old, the big sister to the coming child.
She was the wild card in this Christmas story, she of the opinions, energy, charm, and uncanny sensitivity to whatever vibes are emanating from those around her. Continue reading
The game had rules but they kept changing, of course, because making the rules, changing the rules, and winning are very important to four-year-olds.
This one was in her element: a pool, with four adults in her orbit. One adult or another, or all of us, or she herself, was to be “shark,” out to get her, or someone else, or everybody else, depending on the rule of the moment. The definition of winning also shifted from second to second, from getting to being gotten, anything to guarantee lots of chasing and splashing.
I added another layer of complication to the game by introducing “barracuda” as a second predator. “What’s a barracuda?” she asked. Continue reading
Sometimes all it takes is a skiff of snow to turn unfinished tasks like a pile of undistributed rocks into a feature in a larger beauty.
I’ve been looking for daily beauty and this morning’s snow, so light it might have been frost, obliged. Just enough to glorify the bare, brown earth, highlighting the bas relief of leaves and pebbles and sticks and mud. Even the concrete apron in front of the garage sparkles.
The daily beauty quest is one I’ve taken on for Advent. Continue reading
Yesterday the little family, who had spent Thanksgiving with us, had to leave by 10 a.m. so my husband and I had Black Friday to ourselves. I spent it in front of the woodstove, reading. It was a Blank Friday.
I did not pick up the last of the toys scattered on the floor. I did not speak more than 10 words to Vic. I did not exercise. I did not go out of the house. I nibbled leftovers all day but, after making a breakfast frittata for everybody out of the leftover mashed potatoes with leeks, I did not feed anybody else. I did not go online and post pictures of our Thanksgiving table or our Thanksgiving snow. I did not go online, period. Continue reading
In a few days I will pick up the Thanksgiving turkey and pies at the South Bend Farmers Market. I have a personal connection with that market. My father sold his family’s poultry there when he was a teenager, helping support his family during the Depression.
It’s one of those circles that close when you move back to home territory after a lifetime of living elsewhere. I like that connection but other echoes of my father’s life in my own sometimes trouble me. Continue reading
the practical mystic 