Rainy Day Retreat

Vacation at Home

I have a cold. My colds always come on the same way; it hurts a little when I swallow, (my very first clue every single time), accompanied by a headache and an off-mood; shortly blossoming into entire throat on fire, drippy nose, stuffed head, puffy eyes and general yucky-ness. I am going to rest this one out – I am committed to it! I have stayed home all weekend. I cancelled everything – and I mean, everything. I’ve read, I’ve learned, I’ve rested, I’ve stayed really really still.

Yesterday I spent the entire day (almost) underneath the poofy down comforter, with the cats, endless cups of tea, books, journal, cell phone and Little Slick, (my Macbook Air given to me by my good husband). I journaled, I prayed, I meditated, I read spiritual literature to my heart’s content. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, no one to satisfy. I looked at pictures, I pretended I was on a boat, floating through the sunset, (don’t you love this picture?)

I petted the kitties, I kissed their noses, I talked to them on and off all day. I watched old Little Feat You-Tube videos and dug up some obscure articles about Lowell George. I talked with ‘Neasie, my friend from high school, and together we reasoned out our lives for two hours. Then I took a two hour nap.

I woke up all sweaty and yucky and decided to do a few things, just a few! I threw in a load of laundry, cleaned out the kitty boxes and vacuumed the couch. Then I took a bubble bath and read about Pope Francis. (Can you even believe that the Pope is on the cover of the Rolling Stone?!? I never thought I’d live to see that!)

Together with the article in the New Yorker, I have learned a fair amount about him, (or at least the American liberal slant). He is humble that is for sure, never expecting when traveling to Rome, going to the conclave, he would actually become the Pope! And he waited. He appeared more mainstream than he is. They initially thought he was a pretty conservative choice. Then he got in! And decided to use his power to shake a few things up! He can be a fierce guardian of tradition if he needs to – but he doesn’t seem to care about birth control or the gay issue! He cares about poor people! He cares about the common folk and income inequality and he is exposing the very core value, (god?) of the conservative – the holy free market which helps them keep their money! He is exposing the systems and getting the bad guys out of there! God bless his good soul!

And I love that he drives around in a Ford Focus. That just tickles me.

So anyway, back to my retreat; the only difference between today and yesterday thus far, is I have migrated from underneath the poofy comforter to underneath the chenille throw in front of the fire, gazing out at the rain and the fog from our high perch in the city. And it’s still technically morning, and I have a whole day left of this bliss. I’m looking forward to reading Anna Karenina and my new spiritual book, The Spiritual Art of Creative Silence by Jeanie Miley.

I love time.  Precious, life-giving time. Time is the most sacred resource I have. Thanks be to God! And it is not lost on me what a luxury this is to be able to take a weekend off from the world. I have a warm home, a loving husband, good friends, good books, good food -  I don’t have kids to take care of or the kind of job where I have to show up even when I’m sick. I’m well aware that many, many people do not have this. And I am grateful, I’m actually overflowing with gratitude. I am one lucky girl.

NEW YEAR

NEW BEGINNING!!

I love the New Year! It is a time of new beginnings, a new chapter, a new season – it is anything and everything I want it to be. It all depends on my perspective. 

In preparing my intentions for the New Year, I reviewed my Happiness Project. (Remember that?) I saw there were a few things on there that I just wasn’t doing and probably would not be doing anytime soon, (like exercising every day), so I removed them. Poof! Gone.

Then I added an overall intention that I think applies to everything I do:

INTENTION 2014

To be grounded in the present moment; savoring my life as it is, while remaining open to possibility and change.

This isn’t as easy as it sounds. I really want to be there for my life, exactly as it is, immerse myself in it, connect with it, let it touch me - - while at the same time embracing change and possibility. (Not always easy when the change isn’t my idea!)

I also developed an overall mission statement for my life. I prayed about it a lot, especially using the visioning technique I have learned from a wonderful religious science practitioner, Sheila Thomas. When practicing visioning, rather than praying for something specific that I want, I am learning to “catch” God’s vision for my life, trusting that whatever it is, it is so much better than I could ever come up with by myself!  

MISSION STATEMENT – God’s Vision for My Life

To spread enthusiasm and joy, grounded in healthy habits and savoring the freedom and fullness of life.

GRATITUDE is the spiritual foundation supporting all of this. Paying attention, taking in the good and practicing gratitude allows me to live in the splendor of the present moment, while remaining open to what God has in store for me. It allows me to savor the fullness of it all in an attitude of freedom. It helps ground me in healthy habits because I’m so darn grateful for my body and my good health, (especially on the other side of vertigo). I want to give back by sharing my enthusiasm and my joy.

I thought you might enjoy the reflection questions I shared with the women at our church. I would love to hear your ideas, inspirations and/or intentions for your new beginning.

I am also including my new, streamlined, revised Happiness Project resolutions at the end of this post.

I love you friends, and look forward to sharing our inspirations and intentions with each other as we live them throughout the year.

Signing out from the glorious Bishop's Ranch Episcopal retreat center outside of Healdsburg in Northern California wine country.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

CHANGE AND NEW BEGINNINGS

To keep our faces toward change

And behave like free spirits in the presence of fate

Is strength undefeatable. – Helen Keller

·      Reflect on the seasons of change in my life. Trees shed their leaves and are dormant before there is re-growth. What do I need to shed in order to grow?

§  What seems to be passing away in my life?

§  What seems to be entering my life?  Is there a new thing springing forth?  Is there a mustard seed ready to grow?

§  How am I afraid of change?  Can I find ease in risk?

§  Are there new ways of seeing, new ways of living God is calling me?  Am I open to God’s invitation to me? 

§  Are the changes to where I’m being called internal or external?  Or both?

§  What are the first steps in my new adventure?

HAPPINESS PROJECT RESOLUTIONS

Gretchen Rubin, in her book, The Happiness Project, suggests identifying concrete actions that will boost your happiness, followed by keeping your resolutions. She claimed that the single most effective step in her whole happiness project was her Resolutions Chart.

She developed her Resolutions Chart based on three simple questions:

·      What makes you feel good? What activities, do you find fun, satisfying, or energizing?

·      What makes you feel bad? What are sources of anger, irritation, boredom, frustration, or anxiety in your life?

·       “What makes you feel right?” Does your life reflect your values?

(Changes are in red.)

My Resolutions Chart

Choose the bigger life.

Resolutions on Time

·      I want to move with ease and grace through life and let go of being in a hurry or anticipating the next thing.  (I like this bigger picture resolution, followed by these specifics . . .)

·      Start getting ready 15 minutes earlier. For everything; work in the morning, going out to dinner, getting ready for a trip; everything.

·      Get in bed one half hour earlier. I get up at 5:30 am so that I have lots of unstructured morning time. This means I need to get in bed earlier. (9:30 – really?)

·      Do one thing at a time.

·      Do the next right thing.

·      Enjoy the process.

·      Remember that a lot can get done in 15 minutes. I may not ever have that luxurious span of time before me.

·      Take breaks when I’m really busy. Don’t grind. Turning from one chore to another makes me feel trapped and drained.

·      Spend it out. Time and money are resources. Use the good stuff now. Buy the better quality. Replace stuff that has never quite worked. Open the new package. Use the great idea now; don’t save it for later.

·      Fix stuff. Take the time and patience to just do it. (I glued the mirror back on my lipstick case).

·      Don’t always save the best for last. (Read the Datebook first; go out in the sunny day, clean later!)

·      Take the extra time to make it nicer. (I brought candles and a pretty scarf for my spiritual direction peer group).

Resolutions for the Body

What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.

·      Exercise at least 20 minutes every day. (Even when I’m tired. Even when it’s cold and rainy. Even when I really don’t want to.)

·      Do my 5-minute yoga stretches for my back and shoulders every day.

·      Walk more, park farther away, take the stairs.

·      Wear comfortable shoes.

·      Dress warmly enough.

Resolutions on Things I Want To Do More Of

·  Listen to more music. Put Pandora on at home. Listen to music in the car instead of ruminating.

·      Keep learning new things. Push through the resistance. The big one this year is learning the Mac. It’s just a better product. (I’m doing it!!)

·      Send my daily gratitude E-mail to my buddy. (I already do this one).

·      Try new groups. I have a good start with the Threshold Choir, the book group at the library and Heart and Soul Center of Light. (I’m not really doing this one anymore.) Be fluid. Give it a fair trial but if it’s not working, try something else.

·      Do more of what I like; walking, reading, exploring, meditating and laughing.

·      Be comfortable with my preferences. Accept my likes and dislikes. You can choose what you do; you can’t choose what you like to do.

·      Try one new thing a week. New restaurant, café, route to work, hiking trail, new friend, all this counts. (How about once a month?!?)

·      Keep her suggested one-sentence journal. What happened today that I want to remember? When was I happiest today? (I bought a pretty little blue book that I keep by my nightstand).

·      Keep an interest log. When something I read, see, hear, etc. engages me, write it down. (never really caught on)

Resolutions on Reading and Writing

·      

Read even more! I love it, it is one of my very favorite parts about living, so why not do even more of it! Read at least one hour a day.

·      Reread stuff! Novels, sweet E-mails, inspirational books, Christmas cards, articles that engage me. I reread The Happiness Project cover to cover.

·      Finish psycho-spiritual/self help books that I like. I’m notorious for reading half of these kinds of books and starting another one. (This is hard, I have two or three half finished ones lying around, but I want to keep trying on this one).

·      Read more sweet books; Madeleine L’Engle, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Laura Ignalls Wilder, maybe even Nancy Drew! (good idea, but not happening)

·      Write for at least 15 minutes every day. This can include journaling and thoughtfully crafted E-mails.

Resolutions on How I Want to Act

·      Act the way I want to feel.

·      Identify the problem.

·      Reframe complaints. Focus on what I do like, rather than what I don’t like. Don’t nag or gossip. (a good idea, but I’m never going to do this one perfectly, but gossip stays on there.)

·      STOP when I start feeling, thinking or acting obsessively. Stop worrying. Think about something else. Do something else. Right then and there.

·      Let go; of my point, an argument, obsessing, picking lint off the carpet, feeling slighted. (I like a clean carpet.)

·      Push through resistance when I know the end result will be good for me. Remember that happiness may be the fruit from something I don’t want to do.

·      Let there be some disorder, inefficiency, frustration, even chaos. Go off the path. (I’ve decided it’s ok to be anal.)

·      Be polite and friendly – to everyone.

Resolutions on Relationships

·      Call my friends and family more often.

·      Be more generous; with my resources, with my heart. Let someone have a bad day. Listen more.

·      Focus on what I love about the people in my life.

·      Encourage, love, support.

·      Make new friends. Keep expanding the circle.

The End of the Year in Mendocino

Don’t you love the end of the year? It is a time of ease and reflection for me. I save my vacation so I can take the last couple of weeks off to maximize vacation at home during the holidays. This year we have decided to hole up in our beloved Mendocino, an artsy, coastal community three hours north of Oakland.

We are staying at the Sweetwater Inn in downtown Mendocino, right in the heart of everything just like I like it. But alas, we opened the door and it was not the Apple Cottage with that great fireplace where I had imagined myself reading and writing. Instead, it was the Flower Cottage with a small gas stove tucked away in the corner. Hmmmmm . . . I went and sat outside for a couple of minutes, prayed a little and found my peace with it.

Now I’m actually happy that all we have to do to do is flip a switch to have a pretty fire. No logs, no mess, no constantly stoking the fire, no going home with all of our clothes, socks, hair and entire suitcases smelling of wood smoke.

We’ve eaten well, soaked in the hot tub with the beautiful stained glass window, napped, read, shopped a little and talked a lot. We’ve taken long walks on the bluffs and climbed rocks high above the water.  We’ve even watched whales! (whale spray to be exact). Oh, God can do amazing things with light, rock, trees and water.

Rob bought me two books for Christmas I’m very excited about; Willin’; by Ben Fong-Torres, the story of my favorite rock and roll band, Little Feat, and A Day to Die For, by Graham Ratcliffe, yet another account of the 1996 disaster on Everest, which holds unending fascination for me. Plus, I have Anna Karenina, my journal, the Daily Word, a book on the saints, the latest Rolling Stone, the Sunday Datebook and a J. Peterman sale catalog for good measure. God, I do love to read!  And there has been a lot of reading in front of the dancing gas fire.

There was also some reading in front of the fire at the Mendocino Hotel. Rob was practicing his chanter, (he is thinking of taking the bagpipes back up) and I brought my journal and books to settle in and write to you in in that great lobby with a breathtaking view. However, there was also an annoying vacuum cleaner and a very loud intellectual Berkeley type sitting at a nearby table trying like mad to impress his date. Wouldn’t the world be just great sometimes if there weren’t any people in it?!?

Moving on, we had the most perfect dinner last night at a new restaurant, (to us) called Flow. Perched high above the street we sat in a warm, well lit room overlooking the ocean and sampled many, (too many!) small plates, including bacon wrapped dates with almond, (sublime!), rock cod with garlicky aioli and frites, a citrusy salad with julienned apple and fennel and goat cheese, home-baked rolls, soft and squishy with matching dipping dishes of butter and garlic oil, crisp Brussels sprouts with bacon and God knows what else, and yes, we even tagged on a sausage and arugula pizza at the end. No, we did not have dessert.

I do believe this was one of the finer meals I’ve had in the Bay Area. There’s nothing like really good food, a festive and elegant atmosphere and great conversation with the one you love.

Today, we found a perfect little clearing, surrounded by tall trees with a bench and a view and ate our picnic lunch as we shared our reflections for the year passing and our hopes and dreams for 2014. We talked about our growth over the past year and places where we have been, (and are still) challenged. We talked about patterns and themes and the big currents pulling us along the ocean of our life together. We talked of hopes and longings and possibilities - - intentions, purpose, meaning, and some small and larger ways of making our lives brighter next year by surrendering ever deeper into our relationship with God and each other.

Dear Friends: What are your hopes, intention and dreams for your New Year?