A Mindful Life

I can tell the new year is tomorrow. I’m restless to get the Christmas decorations taken down and put away. I enjoyed having the cozy living room full of ornaments, tree, and presents, and now I would like the space back, thank you very much!
I also reorganized my bulletin board, which was much more cluttered [...]

…they really are a challenge to capture in a photograph.

Jellyfish, Monterey Bay Aquarium

Whether we’re talking about resolutions of initiating new behaviors like working out or extinguishing old behaviors like food indulgences, there is a curious “third self” whose job is to think of clever ways to resolve conflicts between the first and second selves.
The third self employs all kinds of logic, rewards, and punishments to get compliance [...]

Impermanence is the very essence of joy — the drop of bitterness that enables one to perceived the sweet.
–Myrtle Reed, Master of the Vineyard
This afternoon the post-holiday year-end anomie hit me. I feel immeasurably sad. Because all is well and peaceful in my life at the moment, I can only surmise this is grief over [...]

My eldest sister expressed lust for a scarf of her own. We discussed her color preferences; she bought the yarn, but I chose the colorway and type of yarn. I was in the mood to knit last night, so I did almost non-stop. Eight hours later, here it is. It needs to finish drying after [...]

Musicians, artists, and craftspeople belong with mystics in the ranks of shamans and visionaries. All reach into the formless void to pull something of substance and beauty out of chaos. What they do may manifest on the material plane, but their goals reach beyond materialism to a representation of spirit itself. …There is an ecstasy [...]

Jellyfish, Monterey Bay Aquarium

Self-expression, whether individual or tribal, religious or secular, is to my mind one of the most beautiful impulses that we humans possess. We look at our brief time here on earth; we perceive our inconsequentiality in a vast universe of plants and stars; we know our connectedness to our ancestors and descendants and feel our [...]

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
–Anne Frank

The imagination needs moodling, — long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.
–Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write