Well, its coming on fall and I am really not through with summer yet! My garden is just now getting where I can enjoy the fruits of my labor and watering! But then, I remind myself that I AM in "another time zone altogether".....still getting use to waking up to 45 degree weather.....to the dear eating my flowers....to the beauty I see everyday as I look out to the mountains...to the missing of my friends and the familiarity of my place of birth....but I am reminded by those who love me that it takes time. Time...isn't that the truth for almost everything we encounter or do in this life? Time to heal, live, build relationships, save for something we want or need and yes, time to get use to a new life. The beauty here and the grandchildren here help me to keep my focus on the positive, but what if I did not HAVE those things to help me focus on the beauty that surrounds me? I am reading a book called "ON BECOMING AN ARTIST - Reinventing Yourself Through MINDFUL Creativity" (for the purpose of spurring my lazy butt into creating with my God given talent!), but what I am learning through it is not just for my artist side, but for my just living side. It helps me to remember that to be MINDFUL is what keeps me in the present and not the past, no matter where my body lives. "MINDFULNESS makes us sensitive to context and perspective . When we are MINDLESS, our behavior is governed by rules and routines." This can be true whether we eat breakfast, drive our car, talk to people, do our jobs, spend time with loved ones, or clean the toilet! We can BE there in the doing, or be MINDLESS in the doing. No matter what. And it is like everything else in our lives, unless we train ourselves to be mindful in the small mundane places in our life, we will NOT be able to do it in the more difficult places in our lives. You don't climb a mountain before walking around the blocks! My point, I guess in all this rambling, is to say to myself and to those of you who endure these ramblings, is to keep focused on today by training myself to be MINDFUL of today...of the moment...of the day...of the season.... whatever and wherever that is. As Seals and Crofts sang so melodiously, "We will never pass this way again" ...and one day is never like another....what did you miss today? What did I not see today in the squirrels chasing each other or the old lady that crossed the road in front of me? What did I not hear that came from my spouses heart and mind? What did I miss by not playing that game "just one more time" with my grand kids? I don't want to have lived a life of regret that I have seen so many others proclaim, but one of being mindful of everything around me. In THAT state of being, I can then reap my garden no matter what the circumstances, and glean the art that life is made of.
"The sacred moments, the moments of miracle, are often the everyday moments, the moments which, if we don't look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears, reveal only . . . the gardener, the stranger coming down the road behind us, a meal like any other meal. But if we look with our hearts, if we listen with all of our being and our imagination - if we live our lives not from vacation to vacation, from escape to escape, but from the miracle of one instant of our precious lives to the miracle of the next - what we may see is Jesus himself, what we may hear is the first faint sound of a voice somewhere deep within us . . . " --Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
