What I learned on my fall vacation. Life "Unplugged"

Recently we took our annual pilgrimage to the mountains.  Given the speed of life in the northeast, we find that this time each year we have a serious need to retreat from the everyday world and get out to the mountains for some time for not only physical, but spiritual renewal.   We often talk about going somewhere different, but when it comes down to it our hearts always lead the rest of us out to the mountains.

Living in Colorado was different than visiting there.  This is probably the same thing everyone feels when taking a vacation.  Going away from your every day removes you from the stresses of daily life, and from the reminders of commitments and responsibilities that are part of that life.  Not having the distractions of traffic jams, household chores, finances, family (kids or cats) and work, frees up not only  huge blocks of time, but it also frees up huge amounts of energy that can then be expended on things that are equally or more important, but not as urgent.  Separating from the mundane world is something that I often forget that I need to do, but when it happens, I become a happier, healthier and I hope a better person. 

What’s Zen got to do with it?  Below are a few things, not in any order, of some of the best ways this kind of vacation touches my sense of Zen.  So here is "What I learned on my fall Vacation."







You can get up when you feel like it and see things you otherwise would have missed. 



You realize that you are a part of something much greater than yourself.

  

Your adventure happens one step at a time




 




The mundane world loses substance.

 



 

 

"Silence is an essential condition of happiness." Heinreich Heine





Weeds are flowers when you get to know them.





There is beauty and satisfaction in simple living.





The glow of the experience sustains you.



                 I wish for you whatever in a vacation sustains your soul and makes your heart glow.  





I DID IT!!!!!

I have to share the success of my other big project…the one that started me out on this blogging adventure.  Remember the deck?     Just to remind you, here is how it was:



Before





During



Although it took three months to finish I finally completed the last coat of sealer last weekend and placed the furniture and plants in their regular places ready for us to enjoy.  It was an exercise in patience and perseverance with a good bit of faith thrown in.  I must admit, there were times that I was convinced that I had bitten off much more than I could chew.   The process was often tedious.  Some parts of the wood seemed to clean beautifully and others needed multiple processes before the actual wood finally emerged.  But how could I give up?  I couldn't.  So here it is.



What do you think?



Was it worth it?  You bet it was.  The process allowed me to learn about myself. I learned that even when I want to give up, I can push through and come out on the other side.  I learned that beauty hidden is still beauty and if you search hard enough you can find it.  I also learned that while the journey is the most important thing...sometimes the destination can be pretty great, too.

What's Zen got to do with it?  I'm going to be in the present moment and go and have coffee and enjoy being on this beautiful deck.  I hope you take some moments for yourself and enjoy your day, too! 

A Great Place to be From



The Clock Tower



I grew up in a small town in Michigan.  Those of us who hail from there can laugh about the single stoplight that blinks after midnight, but we don’t like it if anyone else does.  Actually there is a second stoplight, but that one blinks all the time except during school hours.  I remember that when I was little, there wasn’t a need for a stoplight at that corner because we had Mr. Ward.

 Mr. Ward was the quintessential crossing god…uh, I guess that would be guard.  He had a uniform and a policeman’s hat that to me meant security and safety.  In the winter he wore a long navy blue wool uniform coat that made him seem even bigger and stronger than he appeared in the warmer months.

His grandson was in my class in school and I remember being so envious that everyone knew his grandfather and that he was so special and important.   The kids who lived in town got to know Mr. Ward really well.  I was a country student and rode a school bus so the only times I really got to see him was when I was spending the night with one of my town-living friends. 

As the gaggle of us would approach the corner, one of the gang would take a running start and let Mr. Ward catch him or her with a strong arm and a wide swing.  We all had total faith and confidence that he would keep us safe...and he never let us down.

One time I got to be the one he let run.  I can still remember the total faith I had he would catch me and the feeling that for those few moments I was flying.  I also felt special that I got to be a part of the town kid group, if only for a little while. 

I got thinking about this old memory after a mini high school class reunion a couple of weeks ago.  Visiting with my brother and sister-in-law, driving around the old homestead and visiting with classmates, some of whom I started out in kindergarten with, gave me the opportunity to relive the fun times.  I also had a chance to very briefly reflect on the not-so-good times and realize that they weren’t nearly as bad as they seemed at the time.  I'm grateful that experience, time and hindsight have worked wonders to smooth out the bumps and potholes of my experiences. 

What’s Zen got to do with this?  Partly it’s about how perspective has a way of leveling out the ups and downs of life so we can see them for what they are…part of the process and not permanent. Partly it’s about being able to let go of the past and be free to experience the moment in all its simplicity and joy.

Good people, good food, conversation and laughter.   The experience was as old as our friendships and at the same time as new as today.   

Sunrise or sunset?  It doesn't matter...it's sunshine.

Old Books New Lessons



Old books can help you see today with new eyes.

Part of what I have enjoyed about my old books, is that I can see characters go through difficult times, but have confidence that in the end, all will be well.  A favorite author is Grace Livingston Hill.  She wrote at the beginning of the 20^th century, and her stories were mostly centered in the Pennsylvania and New York area, with a few excursions to the shore

I enjoy her books so much that I have collected nearly all of them.  The ones I don’t have seem to be so totally out of print that even major searches don’t uncover copies.  Her key premise comes from her very strong Christian faith.  That in itself might seem to remove her from my favorite list, as, while I was raised in a home where the church was a Christian one, I have never carried high the banner of Christianity.  I respect the spiritual aspects, while not being comfortable with the dogma of most organized religions.  What I have found in her writings is a sense of principles that transcend most organized religions and reach a spiritual level with which I can identify.

I have to admit that all of her stories end happily.  The boy meets the girl and while there are many tribulations, they eventually find each other and fall in love.  But there are other aspects of her writings that also appeal to me on a much deeper level.   She tells stories about renewal that somehow strike a chord with me. 

 Many of her books were written in the years just before, during and after the great depression of the 1930’s.  There’s something quaint and frankly comforting for me to read about a time that one could live on $5 a week.  It was a time when grocery stores were a new invention and working in one was a “come down” for a man or woman who had been raised on Park Avenue in New York.  But because the bank closed its doors and “failed” the woman or man with the silver spoon had to go to work.  It was in many ways a simpler time, but one that we might learn from even, or maybe especially today.

One of my favorites was about a young woman who had to go to the big city, (Philadelphia) take a job in a department store and live in a boarding house.  The boarding house described in the book was horrible.  It was a dirty place, providing poor food badly cooked, (that's the boarding part of the house) and was depressing for all of the inhabitants. 

 Miraculously, (I say that because it’s a Christian book after all, so it wasn’t a magical thing but the hand of God and I am not making fun here,) the young woman was left money by an uncle she didn’t know she had.  That "fortune" of $5000 enabled her to bring her dear aunt to Philadelphia and buy the boarding house and transform it into a wonderful, clean and spiritual home for the people who lived there. 

 I love that kind of story…taking what is ugly and dirty and making it beautiful and nice again (remember my deck?  I’m still working on it.)  She has several books with this kind of a story line and I love them all...I even reread them on occasion.  

What’s Zen got to do with this?  Buddhism is less of a religion than a philosophical way of living life.  One of the challenges that organized religion poses for me is the sense that one must believe in their way as the only way.   Whether it’s about getting to heaven or living “right,” it needs to be done through the lens of that particular religion.  In Buddhism, there are principles to live by that do no violence to any organized religion.  Buddhism can be embraced along with other spiritual traditions and neither is damaged.

I can appreciate the Christian tradition of Grace Livingston Hill and the kind of living and choices that her faith demanded of its followers.  I can respect how it helped her in her life and writing and my own soul resonates with many of the beliefs.  My faith in Buddhism is not damaged by my appreciation of her Christianity.  I wonder if she were here in this time, if she could feel that same kinship?

 I like to think that she could.

The Cat

Photo by Mitch

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it, but I have been owned by cats all my life.  If you haven’t been around cats much, it may not seem to make sense, but trust me, cats own the property and they allow you to live on it.  It’s like a sign I saw in a gift shop one time.  ”Dogs have masters, cats have staff.”

 Take the other morning.  I was still sound asleep when I felt someone poking at me.  Mitch was flying a redeye from Seattle to Houston at this ungodly time so I knew it wasn’t him.  But relentlessly I was being poked, prodded and the covers were being scratched at and pulled off of me, with great persistence.   I finally gave up and took my head out from under the covers and looked to the foot of the bed where the annoyance was focused.  There, staring right into my eyes was Cassie. 

 When Cassie joined our lives the name was short for Cassiopeia.  But during a visit, my brother the veterinarian discovered that under the angora-like fur that “she” was actually a “he.”  We made a quick shift to Casanova, but the shortened name fit so Cassie he’s been for about 11 years. 

As you can see, he’s a beautiful cat, with enormous green eyes.  But he also seems to have an uncanny awareness.   Sometimes, he looks at me with his eyes totally focused on mine as if he is searching for something and I swear it feels like he’s able to see into my soul.  

I once read that in Buddhism, cats are believed to be the last animal incarnation before the soul enters human form.  They are also said to be protectors of monasteries when in cat form.  If that’s truly the case, I think Cassie is studying us so when he comes back he’ll be ready to show us how this "precious human life" stuff is supposed to be done.

So aside from the obvious connection of cats to Buddhism, What’s Zen got to do with this?

I believe that any time we have the chance to be around an animal and observe, interact with and love, we have a chance to experience the sentience of all living forms.  Cassie was communicating with me that morning. I still don’t know exactly what he wanted, but I sensed his frustration that I didn’t get what he was trying to tell me, I also got that there are important things going on in his experience that I can’t know, but he's willing to keep trying. 

He is a wonderful living creature with a patient -most of the time - and loving soul.  It's a pleasure and responsibility to care for him.  He helps me see the very real connections between all living things.

And at night he helps keep my feet, and my heart, warm.



Visiting the Farm



Just up the road from where we live is an organic farm.  Organized as a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, Cherry Grove Organic Farm allows individuals and families to purchase shares in January and receive a portion of the produce throughout the entire summer. 

It’s a beautiful concept.  Shareholders help the farmers by supplying capital for purchase of seeds and plants, and literally reap the benefits of the garden.  The farmers get to sell the extra produce beyond what the shareholders receive and keep those proceeds as payment for the work they put in before, during and after the growing season.  It’s a great deal if 1) You can get into one, (ours is full,) and 2) if you go every week and use or give away the produce that you receive.  Just search CSA on your computer for a Farm near you. 

 OK.  Thus ends my commercial for CSAs and back to “our” farm. 

Together, we benefit from the great growing years and together we share in the burden when the season brings damaging storms, drought or pests.  The community in CSA refers not only to the geographic area, but the smaller community of the farm itself.  We gather together on Tuesday or Thursday, every week from June through the middle of November.  I see my farmers and my fellow shareholders more often than I see my extended family.  It’s a connection I have come to highly appreciate and value.

Traditionally, the first week in June is when our farm opens its barn doors for the first pick-up.  Mitch and I share the pleasure of making the trip to pick up our share.  I won’t say we fight for it, but we do both like to experience the simple pleasure of selecting our produce from the bins marked, “half shares.”  Families probably need "full shares" but with just the two of us, we still receive with our half share more than we can comfortably consume in the week.  We also enjoy chatting with one of the owners when she has a free moment.  The expereince connects us to the people involved who are sharing with us not only the wonderful organic foods, but also some of the farming experience.

I grew up on a small farm, so for me it brings back precious memories.  To this day, I have never found sweet corn, watermelons or tomatoes that taste as good as the ones my Daddy grew.  The good news is , that for tomatoes and watermelon, this farm is a close second. (Sweet corn takes too much space for a small yield so Cherry Grove doesn’t grow it.)

We are fortunate in that not only do we have the farm, but we live in an area rich with a diversity of people attracted to the colleges and businesses that are close by.  That combination seems to bring a beautiful diversity to the community both in people and in cooking traditions.  It also means there is a wide age range of people.  Young couples with small children through elders live around here and the farm attracts the full range. 

I love going in the late afternoon, when parents come with their children in tow.  The children help, with various levels of skill, bagging the greens, or weighing tomatoes or potatoes before helping put them in the bags.  They also seem to glory in the opportuniy to pick things themselves.  We start with sugar snap peas, and range through the summer with several kinds of peppers, green beans, cherry tomatoes, herbs and flowers.  I relish the fact that while I was long a mature (well in age anyway) woman before I tried kale let alone learned to cook it, these children will have the chance to try this variety of vegetable in the most ideal circumstance possible - within hours of picking, organic and with the experience of seeing that vegetables do not grow in cans after all.

Organic, freshly picked and within a few miles of home, the luxury is something we savor all season, and miss in the winter time.  What’s Zen got to do with it?  The purity of the food is part of it, of course.  Connecting with the actual ground from which to food comes connects me with not only my personal past and particularly my Daddy, but the distant human past that is a part of all of us.  It also connects me in a real way with people in the community who look and sound different from me, but with whom I have something very important in common.  Once again am delighted by this evidence of the connectedness of all things.

Working at Home

When I do my office work, I now usually do it at home.  This is a new experience, and one that I fought for a number of years.  Part of it was certainly habit.  I have always had to leave home and go somewhere else to get to work.  When I was a high school teacher and later as a junior high counselor, clearly this was a good thing.  And, at the risk of really aging myself out of current relevance, much earlier in my office-needing work life, there weren’t  personal computers, cell phones, i-things and teleconferences, so office work was just that; work you had to do in an office.

Another aspect of my reluctance to take advantage of the opportunities to “work at home” was that I felt that if I didn’t have people around I would become disconnected, possibly even lonely.  Then there was always my fear that the procrastination gene would be more easily activated if I didn’t have the external motivation of people watching to see that I was working.   It’s the 21^st Century version of the tree in the woods.  You know, “If a person is working at home and nobody sees them, are they still working?” 

As luck would have it, through a series of changes, both a change in job responsibilities and the sale of the local office in which I had been given space, I gradually found myself working more at home until now, the small office I have access to is visited only once or twice a month and then usually to find something that is stored there, or to participate in some kind of office celebration, that keeping in touch with people thing.  The new job, while with the same organization is one with nationwide responsibilities so some weeks my “remote” office is in a plane, hotel room or some other kind of meeting space.  That change in circumstances was the final straw that tipped me into my home office.  If I am totally away from home 70 to 80% of the time, I really didn’t want to have to go away from home, even a few miles on those few precious days I have at home.

So, I found a desk, a comfortable chair and rearranged the spare bedroom so that it does double duty for guests and my office.  I’m sitting in it now, and I love it.  Knowing myself and my tendency to daydream and procrastinate (did I mention that before?  I meant to…)  Anyway,  I have the desk perpendicular to the window, so that I can look out and see the yard, with the birdbath and the trees and can count the deer as the wander through, but I have to turn away from the computer screen in order to do it.  With a few (ok more than a few) calls to the IT help desk, I can wirelessly connect to the office server and do any work I need to do, in my jammies if I want to and no one knows the difference. 

With the beauty of conference bridges, I attend virtual meetings, have coffee with coworkers to catch up and do the planning, writing and preparation I need to do so I am ready when my next trip occurs, but still have some time in the soothing presence of my home.  When I’m really lucky I can have breakfast and morning coffee with my husband.  He’s a pilot, which is another reflection I’ll be getting to another day.  So all in all, this move to working at home has been a real blessing.

 What’s Zen got to do with it?  Well, in this situation and lots of others through my life, opportunities emerged that I didn’t recognize as opportunities at first.  So, when I didn’t step up and take advantage of the opportunity, something else happened that gave an added push in the direction of that opportunity.  In some cases it’s only taken the Universe a couple of nudges, but other times the nudges had to get more and more obvious until I finally got the message.  What have I learned?  I’ve learned to be open to what the Universe is telling me.  I have learned that, when I’m fighting some action I have to quiet my mind and listen, both to the messages to take the action and to my inner self so I can determine why I am reluctant.  Sometimes the opportunity really is something good, and my reluctance was based on fear, lack of understanding, inertia, any number of those things that make me human.  Sometimes what the Universe has thrown out there is more of an opportunity to learn something, and my inner guidance is able to tell me that this isn’t the right action for me.  Either way, being open, quiet in mind and then making the decision helps me find the better choice.  The yard and the sunshine that the universe has sent today are calling me.  I leave the office now.  I’m home!

The Project

I decided to clean my deck the other day.  Of course I realized that it would take more than one day, both from the size and from the accumulation of “stuff” on it.  But summer seems to be a good time for this kind of cleaning and certainly the deck has been crying out for attention. 

I have to admit it’s hard work.  It’s especially hard since I am doing it without benefit of pressure washer technology.  No, I decided that I would use cleaner, hot water, a scrub brush and as we said when I was growing up “Power by Armstrong.”  I got myself excited about doing it when I took a bottle of spray cleaner and sprayed a six inch section of a board to see if the cleaner would work.  Not so surprising, in the clear eyes of retrospect, what had been brownish green and slippery when wet emerged nearly white, and with some actual pattern of the wood grain showing.  That was enough for me!

After I closed out my computer from my work day, I put on my oldest jeans, shirt and shoes and decided that with the length of the days of summer, I had a good two hours to work.  It didn’t take long for me to realize that cleaning 24 square inches of deck was less than a drop in the scrub bucket when compared to a deck that goes along most of the width of the house and half of the depth in its L-shaped glory.  Anyone know how many square inches there are in 300 square feet? 

So, clearly I have taken the first bite of a very big elephant.  What’s Zen got to do with this project?  I can see cleaning the deck as a metaphor for this blog, my book and for the project that inspired both.  I could decide to take the easy way out and call in a local handy person to finish the deck for me.  If you can throw money at it, it’s not a problem, right?  The problem of the deck would be solved, clean and bright.  Unfortunately, what it represents for me would still be there.  and that's starting a project and not finishing it because I lose faith that I can complete it.  Or, and I’m really not sure if this is worse or better, never starting in the first place because of the fear I won’t be able to finish.  Either way, I don’t do it.  But this time, I intend to complete the projects: the deck, the blog AND the book. 

Continuing the work on the deck will be a “moving meditation” time.  The beauty of the yard is a backdrop for using my body and my energy to take the time to make an outside part of my home as clean and beautiful as I like to keep the inside of it.  Watching the dirt loosen and dissolve under the soap and the brush under my hand is as positively reinforcing as watching the word count go up as I am writing.  It feels to me that creating, and re-creating are two sides of the same coin.  Working on something big, whether a novel, a deck or a life, is a labor that takes time, effort, tools, patience and perseverance.  Will I be up to the task?  Not only do I believe I can, I believe I will.   

By the way, I’ll let you know when the deck is finished.  Hopefully you’ll see for yourself that the blog is a reality and perhaps even when the book is finished.  As for me, I’m still a work in progress. 

.

Before cleaning and after.

A modest beginning...

It's a beautiful morning to begin a new project, and that project is this blog.  I'm hoping that by sharing some reflections about people, places and things that have helped me learn, they might be useful to you as well.  Since I'm just getting started, today's wisdom is in the form of a bouquet of flowers that I hope will add some sunshine to your day. 

 

I also hope you'll look for new posts as I get used to this new creative challenge!

Oh, and What's Zen got to do with it?  Zen can be about learning, and it can be about appreciating simple beauty.  I'm trying for the learning toay and I hope you will enjoy the simple beauty of these daisys.

Sue