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Showing posts with the label moving

thanksgiving and stress boxes

Today is Thanksgiving, and I’m intensely aware of being thankful . I’ve been remembering three years ago. We were moving. Our son and his family were moving. A baby was on her way, and my full-of-life father-in-law had died. Stress levels were off the chart since we were ticking way too many stress boxes. I remember being sad and afraid, angry and crying, but also very grateful to have my kids and grandkids all living in the same town. In our fluid world, this is a rare blessing. The dust has settled – as much as it can in Central Oregon – but there’s stuff. There always is, right? While standing in line at Trader Joe’s on Sunday afternoon, I watched people. The scene was alive, buzzing and organic. Noise levels were high; the place was crammed. The bustle made me happy. And, I thought, what stories do these people have? The guy checking my groceries said he was single, had been invited to join friends for Thanksgiving, but wasn’t sure. He saw too much dram...

labyrinth

release, receive, return I walked a labyrinth.  It was a first, and will not be the last. Prayer labyrinths differ from confusing, complicated mazes found in cornfields, theme parks and oddly strange old estates, now overgrown and House-of-Usher-like.  No, these places are peaceful, meditative puzzles to mindfully walk, allowing the spirit and soul to settle from the stress that demands. My inner thoughts traveled as circuitously as the path I was following.  Step by step, I moved to the center, taking a few moments there, to reflect on the way...and my conceptions.  Exiting the center, I returned on the same spherical path.   Many metaphors filled my mind, pictures of life, everything old is new again, you know the stuff.  But, then I would slow down my meditations and pace; concentrating on methodical steps – whispering a prayer, hearing the birds, feeling the breeze and cool sunshine. Once again, my inner person would stray....

not grumpy - thankful

moss covered bricks, littered with the remnants of fall and the beginning of Christmas I broke down and put some Christmas music on yesterday.  I’ve tried a few other times … it just seems wrong when I haven’t roasted a turkey yet.  I blame my brother.  He was visiting and was all like “Its Christmas all day, every day, Missy.  You don’t know…”  Being a good big sis and all, Christmas music was cranked up on the ipod.  Confession:  something happened and I’ve been streaming an off-beat Christmas station today.  The Holidays are clattering and clamoring and I’m pretty relaxed – odd. Like an old VHS tape (remember the sticker on them, “please be kind, rewind?”) I’ve been rewinding and re-watching this last year.  A thumbnail:  upheaval, chaos and disorder, uncertainty, fear and confusion were the adjectives.  We were moving; packing up our life to regenerate it in a town once known as home in distant corners of our...