A Mindful Life

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.
–Phillips Brooks

My second attempt with knitting (the one I started at the class was just too funky to keep working with).

Let one who wants to move and convince others, first be convinced and moved themselves. If a person speaks with genuine earnestness the thoughts, the emotion and the actual condition of their own heart, others will [...]

The exhaustion and sadness remains. I feel draped in its weight. Yet it is lightening a little. I made a list of projects and am diligently working on them. The structure helps. I also went to my volunteer commitments, dragging myself along, feeling somewhat better for it after.
I feel as though I’ve got a bout [...]

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, everyday, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
–Christopher Morley

I’d like to be a Gecko, not permanently, but for ten minutes or so. Geckos are charming small lizardy creatures with suction pads for feet. They live vertically. Walls are their terra firma. For them trees grow sideways, hills are sky, pavements are walls.
–Alan Fletcher, The art of looking sideways
Yes, a gecko. Or a bird, [...]

Nacho, who writes Woodmoor Village Zendo, posted a quote by Cheri Huber.
One thing I like about practicing with a group is that we begin to see how impersonal it all is — all our melodramas that can seem so terribly personal. If we spent six months together, we all would know each other’s life stories, [...]

Here’s an interesting idea. Someone started a comment blog devoted to meditation. It’s called 100 days, and the goal is to commit to 100 days of meditation. You participate by leaving a comment. They are on Day 20, but you can start anytime. Your meditation can be from any spiritual tradition. What happens when they [...]

Now Autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods and day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.
–William Allingham

A close encounter involving a party, a piece of steak, and Dr. Heimlich’s maneuver.

Then I was on my side, looking at dirt, and glory, glory, glory, I was breathing. Raspy uncertain breaths, but I was breathing! I never realized how lovely dirt could look. And I could hear a voice saying “She looks much less [...]

This morning as I volunteered at the city library, the foundation director observed that I seem unsettled and expressed concern that I might be bored. This led to a conversation about work, the lack thereof in my life, and stress. He majored in psychology as I did, and when I mentioned the Holmes Rahe Stress [...]