January is our team challenge month, so all the meters I row on my rowing machine are entered with my teammates as we compete as a team (virtually) with hundreds of other teams around the world. It is a big part of my year in my sport, and each January 1st feels like the first day back at school LOL. So the ‘how’ in the answer is that starting today rowing takes precedence over everything else. Even writing. This year it really feels like climbing out from under a rock at last and joining others for some fun. BTW I am the youngest member of my team (64)…so there are no excuses!

When I was a kid my aunt started competing on a very high level as an equestrian. Dressage was her thing. And we would go to the shows and I kept asking “what am I looking at?” as it seemed like horses walking around. The events lacked the excitement of hunter jumping. Slowly, patiently, I was shown the intricacies of the various movements, and the role of the rider in terms of signals to the horse through the bit as well as rider comportment. One of the biggest features was any sign of connection between the horse and rider. All of which were critically observed by the judges. I have come to see life in a similar way. Never before have I been more convinced that the intricacies of how I do even the most mundane and trivial acts are important. The details matter a great deal more than I ever thought. And like in dressage, it is crucial to have a loose grip on the reins.

That for myself defeat comes easy, success is a challenge. A good night’s sleep is optional. I don’t really care about food, I mean I eat, but I don’t mind what it is and can have the same things over and over without having a meltdown. Coffee remains non negotiable. I continue to despise push-ups. I can, in fact, despite outward appearances, balance a checkbook. I actively resent anything that takes time away from writing, especially self created distractions to procrastinate. Much to my dismay I have developed a taste for melancholy. I have developed unhealthy attachments. Not exciting racey ones, like to gambling or loose women, but to a particular pen, a parking space now commonly referred to as MY parking space at Publix, routes to and from destinations and organized closets. These things in themselves are harmless, but the fuss I can make at their loss or disruption is new and alarming. And with all this I remain surprised to find that I am much gentler with myself.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offence, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Master, let me not seek as much
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.

This is everything.

The currency of thoughts, and the sense that exchanging them with others increases and enhances their value, has been, in my experience, invaluable. And I say thoughts NOT words. Talking at each other is different, and of questionable value. Reading your entries each day is a great example. For not until after I have bestowed my view on the matter of the day do I read yours, and it is always a revelation of a series of new facets to each question! Creating all kinds of possibilities not to mention community.

Fecundity in all its variants visible all around us. The fact that this very potency is the essence of existence. How all things inevitably come to work within nature’s plan for promoting life. Even Chernobyl is being slowly worked on. So no matter how badly I muck it up, somehow it gets put right again. So I can celebrate that I am perhaps a stimulant force that incites this process, promotes it, like a pioneer plant in a vacant lot starting out as mostly dry gravel and bits of pavement that, in even a year’s time, will become an urban meadow if left to itself.

Merry Christmas to you all!

That I am (was) a talented Architect. It is true that it is a natural talent for me, which I then developed through schooling and a career that lasted over two decades, and then gave up (to work on a farm!).

I think I have learned (think is doing a lot of heavy lifting there) that I learned something very important from this question. That just because I am gifted at something doesn’t mean that it is my calling, what I am meant to do. My leaving that career wasn’t rebellious as much as giving in to the many many signs that it was time to move on. And I have designed and built some beautiful things since, just not as my work gig.

Funny, I was just telling someone about one of the major shifts that happened when I left the corporate world and became a farm hand. It was the fact that suddenly the weather was important. Depending on the weather we decided what work we would do, often changing during the day. It was so refreshing paying attention to the weather. For years I suppose I rocketed through life without even noticing the weather in my heart…and now it is so opposite. My soul and I communicate through the heart, almost as if it was the kitchen table over which we chat during the day. Influencing where I put my attention and efforts.

Any time I am reminded of my sense of mortality essentially produces a couple of responses. First, that this whole experience is a time limited offer, so I better get on with it. Second, a bit of caution in terms of risk taking….really a deepened awareness of ways I might be showing myself some carelessness, recklessness really, in terms of my own health (I am looking at you Christmas Cookies). And then there is this other thing, a sense that along with accepting my own mortality I am admitted to the ‘land of the living’. I recognize (literally re-awakened) to the fact that I am among fellow travelers all around me: birds, trees, the ducks in our parkland and the grackles in the parking lot at Publix (I think all Publix have them in south Florida!). And that, more than anything opens a sense of gratitude for this fellowship of beings all muddling through together.