My 73-year=-old feet in comfortable shoes on the little handmade rug I treated myself to after my mother died–my magic carpet.

This will be an excellent practice. Thank you.

I’ll try not comparing myself to others.

That I’m not as nice as I like to think I am.

Advent has long been my favorite season of the church year. This practice reminds me that we can always be in an Advent–holding the waiting as a Real Thing, not as something that leads to a real thing. This *is* my life, this suspension, this present moment.

I was standing in the kitchen, grinding coffee and brooding over a problem with our water system that has caused the basement to flood. Again. And suddenly I remembered this practice. Oh, the smell of the grinding coffee! The light through the kitchen window! The fact that we HAVE a water system to have a problem with!

I signed up for this practice because for ten years now–since my mother died–I’ve had her little plaque with the “Normal Day” quote on it hanging in my kitchen. Right now I’m happy to have the Normal Birds coming to the bird feeder outside my study window, and to have a sink full of Normal Dishes that need to be washed!