Vacation at Home – Part 4

 

Cultivating Gratefulness  - Learning How to See in the Springtime of the Soul

Field of Daffodils at the San Francisco Zoo

Purity of heart is learning to see clearly. 

John Main, Benedictine Monk

 

Cultivating gratefulness is a creative act.  I actually create something new when I am grateful.  I learn how to see. I focus and move into the depth of things.  There is so much life and beauty within a five mile radius of my home when I develop the consciousness of how to look.  I realized that I could start experimenting right at home.  What makes me feel hopeful, playful, spiritual and lighthearted?  What am I doing?  Who am I with?  What pulls me?  Do I have the courage to follow it?  

“Take a long, loving look at the real”.

Walter Burghardt, Jesuit theologian 

How can you make your own neighborhood interesting, no matter where you live?  Experiment with your intuition.  What do you see?  What engages you?  What does it feel like to be engaged?  How does it feel to be so present, you don’t want to be anywhere else?  What draws you deeper into your everyday world?  How can you discover the mystery and magic in the ordinary?   

One looks selectively and relishes the unexpected.

Henry James , “A Little Tour of France” 

My friend’s photography is not only a hobby, but a spiritual practice when she is fully aware of the world around her.  She has trained herself to notice, to really see the beauty in the mundane, the unexpected in the ordinary and the relationships between people, animals and the natural world.  Her photographs open up a whole new world within a world. 

Life is a wondrous journey. Romp in the kingdom! Get off the bank and frolic in the stream of goodness; that exquisite place of lightness and beauty. Go on vacation and stay there! 

The moment is to the minute as the atom is to the molecule – live gloriously in the very moment.

Me!

 

I wish you a joyous spring, new beginnings, re-creating and resurrection dear readers!

 

Vacation at Home – Part 3

 

The Flaneur

 

The flaneur – that aimless stroller who loses himself in the crowd, who has no destination, and goes wherever caprice or curiosity directs his steps. . . the flaneur is in search of experience, not knowledge.”  - The Flaneur, Edmund White

 

 

 

 Yes!  That’s exactly it!  I am a flaneur!  This captures the spirit of how to be on vacation at home.  I love being amidst the buzz of life, but from inside of myself, whether in Oakland or Paris. I am free to reflect and observe while surrounded by people at cafes, street fairs and urban parks.   

The trick to being on vacation at home is to cultivate this flaneur consciousness of finding things endlessly absorbing.  Learn how to loiter.  Stay curious!  Stay alive!  Keep it fresh!  Follow your nose.  What pulls you?  Take the detours.  Find the hidden gardens off the alleys, peek inside the pretty backyard porches, climb the stairways between the homes built in the ‘20s for hardy Berkeley walkers. Stop and take a quick look at the dining room of a new restaurant, grab a menu, wander in the neighborhood bookstore, delight in the flower arrangement outside of the florist shop. . . life is endlessly wondrous! 

 

 

Cultivate the state of being purposeless . This is vacation!  This is a lighthearted playfulness you can feel anywhere at any time.  Savoring the experience is a fun, interesting way to be in the world. 

 

 

Flaneur consciousness works best when I create a general structure for the day.  Studying maps and booklets and letting my enthusiasm build is an important part of the process.  But once I’m out there, I let go of the structure and abandon myself to unfettered spontaneity and curiosity. Every moment is an amazing opportunity to be present.  Be interactive with the environment, letting it reveal itself moment by moment. Be interruptible.  Don’t plan.  Let yourself be surprised. Let it open up like a wild, exotic flower before you.

 

His passion and creed is to wed the crowd. . . to take up residence in whatever is seething, moving, evanescent and infinite. - Baudelaire

Vacation at Home – Part 2 

 

Rockridge Oakland Early Spring

 

Geophilia – Relationship with Place 

Geophilia is cultivating a deep love of place. Isn’t that a cool concept? It was new to me when my spiritual director introduced it after hearing about my love of the Bay Area, Paris, Oregon, Point Reyes,Yosemite and the Rockies. People with geophilia actually develop a creative relationship with place. They not only have relationships with the people and the community, but they also have developed a connection with the place itself.  

 

Glorious Yosemite Meadow

 

I am one of those people. I yearn to discover everything about the place I live and know it deeper and deeper over a lifetime.  I will travel the world, but I don’t ever want to live anywhere else.   

 

Bois de Boulogne - Paris

 

Lake Tahoe - Rob Droste

 

I love the Bay Area. I want to share it with my friends. I want to write about it.  I want to explore its parks, bookstores, libraries, restaurants, music halls, cafes, natural areas, pools, waterways, and hiking trails.  I love my expedition days, (also coined by my spiritual director), devoting a morning, a day or even a whole weekend to exploring the place I live and its surrounding areas. It gives me great joy to develop and deepen the relationship I have with my home. I have fallen in love with the place I live.  You can, too. 

 

Japanese Gardens at Lake Merritt Oakland

 

Red Rocks - Colorado

 

 

No matter where you live; no matter how much money you have; no matter how many hours you work, no matter how many friends you have, whether you are partnered or single, you have yourself; your resources, your creativity, and your spirit.  You have that essential core of yourself that is deeply and irrevocably free.  You can be on vacation anywhere!  Even at home.  Even at work.  Now that is radical! 

 

My Beloved Point Reyes - Spring Wildflowers

 

Spring Iris at Point Reyes

Vacation at Home – Part 1 

Spirit of adventure, cultivating gratitude, love of place, conserving resources, being authentic, staying curious, keeping it simple, creating systems that liberate . . . 

A State of Consciousness 

I have spent a lot of money and time on carefully planned vacations in faraway places.  I haven’t always returned home rested, happy and rejuvenated.  Often I didn’t feel like I thought I would feel.  Sometimes I was anxious through much of it and couldn’t get settled.  Maybe it was too planned without enough room for spontaneity.  For whatever reason, it wasn’t as much fun as I had envisioned.  I had wasted that precious time and I wouldn’t get another big vacation for a whole year.  If I have to wait that long I started wondering how I might be lighthearted, curious, interested and engaged in what I was doing in my everyday life.   

It’s not so much that I wanted another vacation.  I wanted that joyful feeling of living in the moment, carefree and at ease.  I wanted that state of being where I was finally content, sated, no longer hungering for the next thing.  Isn’t that the true spirit of vacation?  It is not about what I do or where I go, but how I do it.  Vacation is not a place, it’s an experience.  It’s an experience I can’t force, I receive.  It is a whole new way of being in the world.  Vacation is a state of consciousness.   

I realized that I could learn how to savor my environment and get absorbed in that joyous way.  I could learn how to notice the beauty and the splendor that is right before me every day.  I could learn how to minimize the time pressures, the deadlines, the stress that robs me of joy, the needless errands and empty social engagements.  I could learn how to add luxury to my daily routine and feel like I’m on vacation while moving through an ordinary day.  

There are a lot of different ways to be creative.  Some of you create art, music, characters and stories.  I create experiences.  I realized that one of the ways I am creative is living life well and living it resourcefully; walking lightly, simplifying, lightening the burden of too much stuff, minimizing obligations and maximizing the time for play. There is an art to living life well and it is worth cultivating.  What could be a more lofty purpose than developing fullness of life?  

I have always craved experiences of deep meaning; I want to live a life of purpose; to keep learning, to stay curious, and broaden my perspective.  I want to live with a sense of adventure and unlimited possibility.  I realized that the most ordinary day can be special, new, electric and full of promise when I am on vacation at home.