Weekly Book Post: Mindful Parenting and How to Live in the World

Last week I read two more books that encouraged mindful living: Mindful Parenting by Kristen Race and How to Live in the World and Still Be Happy by Hugh Prather.

The first book is a mix of information on brain research and psychology, recommendations for common stressors, and then techniques and exercises for mindfulness suitable for various different ages.  I found it to be a reasonable, "middle path" in its recommendations, and to be practical and easy to understand.

A quote from the book:

But there is only so much you can control from the outside.  No matter where you are, there will always be stressors, and if you don't have the tools on the inside to manage the stressors in your life, your external environment becomes irrelevant.

Prather's book is a meditation on choosing happiness through mindfulness and gradual enlightenment.  It is about happiness from within, not dependent on external circumstances.  I found parts of the book very thought-provoking, and a few practical ideas for keeping my focus on my intention throughout the day.

A quote from the book:

True happiness is flexible because it is geared to an inner state that can be controlled and not to the world, which never can be.  There will always be interruptions, and this must become unimportant.


Both have been good resources for my continued journey to a more enlightened and mindful inner self.

How the Walking is Going

So you might remember that I (without really meaning to) laid down a new walking challenge for the kids.  The original threat intent was to hike Every Day.

Every Day is not possible, sadly.  There are so many days that are already overfull with Stuff To Do, or days when Someone Is Sick, or days when The Weather Sucks.

But we have managed to do at least one hike a week, and it's been good.

There has been a simple walk around the lake, with a quick sighting of an invasive species, the nutria:



And a quick hike on a loop trail in the city that provokes the question "what is that stuff growing on these sticks?" (really, if you know please tell me!)




There have been extremely cold hikes where we had to walk fast just to keep warm.



And hikes where a sign at the trailhead warning of a cougar sighting spooked my daughter out and made her jump at every rustling fern the whole way.

There have been many opportunities to learn more about our local ecosystems and do some nature study.




We even managed to do one of our hikes so quietly that a pileated woodpecker flew right up to us before it saw us and swerved.  The loud beats of its wings were startling in the quiet forest.



And the kids are impressing me.  They really didn't want to do this, and they were not good walkers.  Now, they have both developed better attitudes about it, become more interested in what there is to be seen along the way, and have better stamina.  This time together can be a great chance to talk, hold hands, indulge in imaginative storytelling about the landscape around us, and just be present to our own bodies and the nature around us without the distractions of toys, entertainment, books, etc or the self-consciousness that comes from being in society.




Walking is one of my new favorite things!

Trying to Squeeze More From the Day

So we have just observed the annual practice of rolling our clocks back by one hour ... which gave us one "extra" hour this weekend.  I got one more hour of sleep before heading off to work on Sunday, but the price has been that the evenings are now terribly, terribly, dark all of a sudden.

And I have read more than one article this week that advocated that folks not adjust their sleep schedules, but instead stick to their previous rising times and get up an hour earlier than was their previous habit.  This, say authors such as happiness guru Gretchen Rubin, will give you "an extra hour a day".  Recommended uses for this hour include exercise, spiritual practice, working on a project, or just having an hour to yourself.

But, trick is, you then have to go to bed earlier.  Because we also know that sleep deprivation is not a good thing.  It's like Benjamin Franklin said - early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.  I do observe in my own life that mornings tend to be used more productively, and evenings are often frittered away on leisure, socializing, and "vegging out".

Back in the summer I wholeheartedly agreed that getting up early was the only way to go.  Now, perhaps just to be a contrarian (or because of seasonal affective disorder, take your pick), I find myself resisting this notion.  Right now, I don't want to squeeze another hour from the day.  I just want to go with the flow.  I want to wake up with the sun, and be winding down with the sun.  Dawn to dusk may sound impressive, but unfortunately that is now only 7am to 5pm in these parts.  And it will get worse.  But I just don't feel like being productive in the dark.

I still have plenty to do.  I don't know when I will do it all.  But, I'm going to sleep when my body seems to want to sleep.  There is no such thing as an "extra" hour.

p.s. Am I the only one that thinks that "seasonal affective disorder" is a weird name for a disorder?  Like we somehow shouldn't be affected by the seasons, even though it would be the natural course of evolution for living creatures to be affected by the seasonal shifts and to alter their behavior accordingly?  It's like "shift-worker syndrome" ... implying that somehow the problem of doing something totally unnatural to your body is a "syndrome" that should be treated by medication.  I don't know ... all symptoms of modern life I guess.  Modern Life Syndrome/Disorder.

Sometimes the Only Routine is "Stay Flexible"

Somedays we do our workbooks at home, somedays we have to do them at the dealership while the oil is being changed in the car.  These routine tasks that happen every now and then still feel disruptive to my work and homeschool flow.  Oil changes, dentist appointments, annual check-ups, propane fill ups, vet appointments, random weird errands, tasks, and appointments in general!

I like routines and rhythms.  Goodness, I even like a good bell system telling me when to be where.  I like structure, and neatness, and order.  I think it would be nice to go into a religious order that had a strong structure to life - like Benedict's Way.  How do Benedictine monks deal with dentist appointments and propane fill-ups - does this throw their whole rhythm off the way it does mine?

Life just doesn't seem to stay neat and tidy, and more and more I'm finding the only "normal" I can really give to our days is "stay flexible".  Of course, this is part of the transition from the predictable days of winter to the adventurous days of summer, and this throws me off every year.  But why does it look so lovely and manageable on other blogs?  Am I doing it all wrong?



Somedays the routine gets thrown off for what feels like a "good" or "fun" reason, like when we have a field trip to the beach, or we drive 45 minutes each way for a homeschool chess club but it's so much fun it makes it worth it.  Last minute invites to play dates and amusement parks and sleep overs call for flexibility, but the result is fun.




Or there are the times when it's not fun, like when we are in the hospital waiting room for hours while my sister is having her tonsils removed.  These are times that are decidedly not fun, but of course you need to make yourself available to help people in those times.  The times when you get a last minute call to rescue someone who's car has died on the highway, or to go feed someone's cat because they missed their flight home, or bring them soup and check their fever, or worse of all to meet them at the hospital because they think they have weird chest pain.  People will need you, and you'll have to drop everything to help - and that seriously messes up the routine!

We also get called on to help with things: move a piano, help tow a recreational vehicle for a friend, collect book donations for a future charity sale, etc.  All the many times that people need just a little bit of help, and of course you make time!  That's the kind of world I want to live in, where people show up to help each other, to do the good stuff that makes it all a bit of a better world.




And then there are the days when schoolwork is abandoned because there is other work I need to get done, like working on the yard of our rental house.

Before:


After:



With two houses to care for, there are plenty of tasks to be done or to find someone else to do.  And I can't seem to get that work to always fit into the boxes of my routine that I wish it would.

So .... I wish this post was a lovely "the rhythm of our days" type of thing with beautiful pictures of tea time and reading time and a sweet nature table photo thrown in for extra aesthetic value.

But that's not my life.  This crazy, flexible, be there for people and do as much as I can life is the one I'm actually living.  Flexibly.

Does this Outfit Make Me Look Heartless?

Like many others, I have been horrified by the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh last week - with a death toll now over 300 people.  I saw a political cartoon this week, which I now cannot find again, that showed a woman holding up a garment to herself in a department store and saying "does this make me look like I'm oblivious to global working conditions?"  I'm just horrified that the real price for our cheap and semi-disposable clothing is being paid by low-wage and high-risk workers in poor nations.

I decided to do a little look through our clothing to try and figure out where most of it was made.  These two piles of my children's clothing are pretty typical: a mix of one homemade item, a few gifts, a few hand-me-downs, lots of stuff bought in thrift shops or on ebay, and a few things bought new from Lands End or Costco.  They were made in:

The Philippines
Sri Lanka
Bangladesh
Korea
India
Honduras
China
Vietnam
Cambodia
My homemade item that was made right here
and one item said "Made in the USA"

I can't personally travel to all these places to see how workers are treated in each country, but I tried googling it to get an idea.  It was actually very difficult to get any sort of information, other than a disquieting sense that, no, it's not good in any poor nation with minimal government regulations.

So what to do?  I'll keep doing some of what I have been doing anyway (for other reasons).

1.  Reduce.  There's a reason it comes first in the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra.  Just reducing the amount of clothing that my family purchases and owns is the best step to take for the environment, my wallet, and my laundry load.  It also would mean less contribution to the exploitation of workers.  My grandma used to say "buy quality, not quantity", and she was right.  I'm thinking about the notion of the Minimalist Wardrobe, as well.

2.  Reuse.  A lot of that clothing shown above was purchased used.  (In fact, in those laundry piles only the socks, underwear, two pairs of pants, and one pair of pajamas were purchased new.)  Yes, it was originally made cheaply, but reusing it still is better for the environment, my wallet, and my contribution to worker-exploitation.

3.  Mend what you have, or upcycle it (or when that fails use it as a cloth rag).  When clothing gets worn out around here, I fix it, or it gets upcycled into hats, rugs, quilts, etc.  When all else has been tried, it gets used as a cloth rag.  We don't use any disposable paper products here except toilet paper. However, this post isn't about disposable paper.  But mending and upcycling can extend the lifespan of an article of clothing, thereby reducing the impact to environment, wallet, and worker-exploitation.

4.  Buy Fair Trade.  This would be ideal.  But I've done a bit of internet searching about fair trade options this week and I find them slim for men and almost non-existent for kids.  I can probably dress myself Fairly, but that's partly because in my work setting and living in the Pacific Northwest I can get away with a certain "hippy" look to my fashion.  My favorite Fair Trade sources:

• Maggie's Organics is my usual source for women's socks, tights, and leggings.  My local food co-op carries them, as well as the Fair Trade store in town.
• Mata Traders is a Fair Trade line that is carried in the store in town, and I've purchased two sundresses from them that I'm very happy with.
• Fair Indigo carries a good selection (for women), and I always check them out, although I have yet to purchase anything.
• We're really lucky to have a Fair Trade store in town, that sources from all around the world but can tell you the "story" of every item in the store.  I've bought many things there and will continue to do so (such as Ethletic shoes).

Fair trade is usually better for the environment (most is organic as well as fair trade) and it's definitely better for the workers.  It is NOT better for my wallet.

5.  Buy Made in the USA.  It's really hard to find anything Made in the USA in the box stores.  But there are some websites that specialize, so that is helpful.  A cursory search, however, leaves me with the impression that I'll only be able to buy really basic clothing and stuff more suited to outdoor work or camping.  Which is fine - we need that stuff too - but it won't be a complete source.  Buying USA made is probably not really better for the environment (maybe less factory pollution because of regulations, maybe less energy used to transport it here to me?), but it is better for worker conditions and for our own economy.  Not better on my wallet.

6.  Make it myself.  I enjoy sewing, but this isn't going to become the main source of our wardrobes.  For one thing, I just don't have time.  For another, I can't make some of the stuff we need: socks, underwear, my husband's button-up shirts for work (he's particular), or jeans. And where does the fabric come from?  I like to order from Near Sea Naturals,  but if I only get my fabric there this is once gain Good for the Environment, Good for Workers (well, it's more work for me, but ) But NOT good for my wallet, or my time.

So that is my Six-Point Plan: Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Fair Trade, Buy USA, Make it Myself.  I'm really going to miss my Lands End core wardrobe staples, though.

Earth Day and Every Day

What do we do every day to give back to the Earth?

1.  The Outdoor Hour - something relatively new (and weather dependent) is that I'm requiring my kids to go play outside for one hour a day.  They spend the time doing a variety of things, but mostly they are connecting with our back yard and (I hope) nature.

2.  Green power.  I pay slightly more for our electricity to know that we are getting it from all "green" sources.  It's not perfect - hydro is a big part of our "green power" and dams still effect rivers - but it's a lot better than coal.

3.  Conserve power.  Turn the heat down, only run full loads in cleaning appliances, line dry clothing, turn off stuff you're not using, drive less, consume less stuff (because it used power to make it).

4.  Be careful with the chemicals.  We don't use herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers, and we use simple and safe home cleaning recipes.  I also properly dispose of light bulbs, and we use only rechargeable batteries.

5.  Reduce waste.  When I'm shopping, I try to avoid packaging and trash. I carry my re-usable shopping bags and re-use tubs and bags for produce and bulk bin foods.  I wash out and re-use sandwich bags, bread bags, etc when I do end up with packaging.  I keep a bag of plastic tubs in my car so that when I need a carry-out container from a restaurant I use one of my re-usable ones and not styrofoam.

6.  Buy used.  Buying used books, clothing, and anything else you can saves waste and all the energy that would be used to make something new.

7.  Eat local, organic, and as sustainably as we can.  We're not vegetarians, but we try to eat less meat and to mostly just eat what we raise ourselves.

8.  Support conservation organizations and laws.

9.  Convey an appreciation of nature and ecology to others.

10.  Consider the impact of each action.

It's not perfect, and I still want to improve our impact, but for today this is my love letter to our Mother Earth.

Our Own Pigs

This year we decided to try raising our own winter pigs.  My brother did this last year, and we were inspired by his example, so when he was buying piglets from a friend, we bought two as well.

We're not vegetarians, you know.  Nothing against being vegetarian - my husband's parents are both vegetarian and he grew up on a vegetarian diet, and I was a vegetarian for one year in college.  But now he has no interest in being a vegetarian, and I have discovered that with my elliptocytic anemia (a rare genetic blood disorder which involves making blood cells that are the wrong shape and are inefficient oxygen carriers) my physiology makes vegetarianism feel bad.

Lots of people are not vegetarians, and they apparently have no trouble going to the grocery store and buying cuts of meat that they bring home and cook.  Even knowing what so many of us know about factory farming models, people continue to buy meat that comes from animals raised that way.

So it is confusing to me that people who can be comfortable doing that are uncomfortable with the notion of eating an animal that you raised yourself.  Our pigs have lived a good life, with lots of room to run around, sunshine, belly scratches, good healthy food, etc.

Yes, we're all a bit sad that on Saturday the butcher is coming.  We've opted for a home visit, so they don't have to travel, get stressed out, or really know what's coming.  They'll go quick and painless.  Then we will have well-stocked freezers, which we hope will keep us supplied for almost two years (we only eat meat once or twice a week).  We do not plan to raise pigs again next year, but will instead do turkeys.  It's possible that in the future it will be every other year alternating pigs and turkeys.

And we'll get more than just the meat - the area they've been enclosed in is now completely fertilized and rooted up.  We'll plant it with a cover crop (which our chickens will then get to free-range over and will enjoy immensely) then next year when it's not so "hot" we plan to plant a blueberry patch there.

If you are going to eat meat, it came from animals.  I think it's important that my children see that.  I think it's important that we all see that.  Maybe it's the fact that everyone wants this to be "out of sight out of mind" that lets us ignore conditions that we should never be willing to see any creature live in.

I hope I'm not upsetting anyone, but this is reality.  For the last six months I've felt more than a bit judged, even a bit ashamed.  In front of many people, we can't talk about having the pigs.  Right now, as we are all thinking about the end, this doesn't feel right to me.  No one I know feels like they can't talk about getting the occasional hamburger.  OK - I do know a lot of vegetarians and for them they wouldn't talk about getting a hamburger.  But I've felt like even the meat-eaters are saying that raising our own is a step too far.  It's not a step too far - it's the step that needs to be inseparable from eating meat at all.  (Not that everyone has to raise it - just that everyone has to realize where it came from and care about the life of the animals).

Here I sit

I spend so much time sitting at this tiny desk.  I tend to flit from thing to thing, responding to an email, reading a chapter of a book, suddenly being inspired to write a blog post or journal entry, checking my email again and finding out that there is someone who needs my attention or just my prayers, noting them in my Cares journal, knitting for a bit while I think, then returning to studying again, or perhaps going to warm my coffee.

I like to listen to Pandora on my headphones while I sit here.  I have a lamp above this desk that I keep meaning to get a full spectrum light bulb in so that I get more good light.  In a house full of shared space, this is my space.  This is where I sit.

The rewards of patience

So many things are like this mushroom kit that the kids put together a month or so ago.

You put in the effort, and you can't see the result right away.  All you can do is hope for the best.

You peek on it, checking and worrying.  Maybe you didn't do it right?

And then you forget about it.  It takes too long, so you stop checking on it everyday.  You let it sit, you move on to other projects ....

And then, you notice it all of a sudden!  And it can be like magic - like wow! how did that happen all of a sudden?  Where were you when this awesome thing just popped out?

Growth happens when no one is looking.  It happens after you've given up on it.  It happens in between the check-ups, the moves, and the fussing.

Gratitude Day 24: Skipping Black Friday

We spent Black Friday at the zoo, where this duckling tried to bond with Hypatia and follow her out of the avian area.

I'm very grateful to feel no urgency about my Christmas shopping.  My extended family does a Secret Santa gift exchange, so we all only need to get one gift.  My in-law's are a smaller family and are pretty laid back about gift giving also.  And my immediate family will only be exchanging small, mostly homemade gifts, and expecting Santa to come just to fill the stockings with some small things.

Our usual routine is to pick a shopping day and to make a day of it in our small downtown shopping area, for festive fun.  No real crowds, no parking lots, no lines to speak of, and no cranky mall employees.

I love the Christmas season, and am grateful to start it the same way I want to end it: with family and togetherness and hopes for a peaceful, better world.

Day 21 of Gratitude: Flexible Work

I have a great job.  What you do for work is going to take up a huge part of your life, and although this is a pragmatic transaction (your time in exchange for the money you need to live) people almost all agree that a happier life results from finding work that you love - work you want to do even if you weren't being paid for it.

As a Director of Religious Education, working full-time, I have quipped that I have the reverse of what many working people I know have: They have 5 or 6 days a week of rigid work and 1 day to figure out how to get everything else done, while I have 1 day a week of rigid work and 6 days a week to do everything else and get ready for that one day.  It's a pretty sweet deal.

Don't get me wrong - flexible work does not mean No Work.  A flex day is not a day off.  And sometimes flexible goes both ways - most of my meetings have to be in the evenings and that means less time with my husband, I work weekends and that means no normal weekends with my husband, I get random work calls on my cell phone at any old hour, and I find it hard to go out for coffee by myself without running into someone for church who would like me to sit down and talk with them for a bit ... sometimes for impromptu pastoral care sessions.

When I go on errands, they are usually mixed, with a list for church and a personal list.  I'll separate my purchases at the check out line and saying "I need to use two different charge cards today" rolls off my tongue on a regular basis.  My family is used to the line "I just need to run into church for a little bit ... I'll try to be back soon".  And of course holidays have no real meaning for a religious professional, and I'll never get to enjoy a 3-day weekend with the rest of the world.

But ... if you can take your work to the beach with you, how cool is that?  I love 85% of my work, and would do it even if it wasn't my job.  (I'm giving it 15% for attending boring or unpleasant meetings, which not all meetings are, cleaning up after others, moving heavy furniture around at church, and the other less-fun but necessary tasks).  And I get to read or write or plan while watching my kids play on the beach, or at the park.  And, yes, I've also brought my work to less fun places, like dentist or hospital waiting rooms - but that is also a blessing to be able to do.

I am very grateful for this flexible work.  There is a lot to be said for a change in work culture that requires a bit less "face time" in the office and transitions us to a focus on productivity rather than time-spent working.  If you can get it done on the beach, why the heck not?

(Caveat - I do see some necessity for face-time for work teams, and it is nice to be able to pop down the hall and ask a co-worker their opinion real quick.  But overall I still think a lot of professions and groups could have less face-time and more flex-time if we had a small culture shift and worried more about product and less about controlling people.)

Day 16 and 17 of Gratitude: Libraries

I'm a day behind on my 30 days of gratitude, but I love Public Libraries so much that I think I can give them two days worth of my gratitude. :)

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.
Ray Bradbury 

I have always loved libraries.  As a child, my mother would take us to the library and we'd haul out a radio flyer wagon full of books to take home.  We always had as many books out as we could, and although we ended up paying a lot in overdue fines because of having too many books out to manage properly (a problem I still have - the bane of homeschoolers, autodidacts, and avid readers alike), but I think paying fines to libraries is only right and just.

Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.
Barbara Kingsolver 

What do I get from the library?  Books, of course.  Audiobooks, as well.  Music CD's, sometimes.  Children's DVD's.  Bilingual books that we use to try and learn spanish.  But we also get children's story hour and other educational events, author talks, meeting rooms available for community groups, internet access, printers, reference librarians, children's librarians, summer reading programs, and more.

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
Saul Bellow 

The kids and I go the library at least once a week, and habitually have out about 150 items (our limit with three cards).  I end up paying between $5-$20 a month in fines, but the service we receive is priceless.  

Day 15 of Gratitude: the town we live in

A new building for the local Children's Museum just opened this week - and it is amazing.  The kids love it.

Today I'm grateful for the town we live in.  It has so many wonderful amenities like museums, performance art centers, art galleries, bookstores, public transit, and parks, a great local culture with lots of artists and cool people, a good Farmer's Market, and yet it isn't too big and the traffic and crime are pretty low.  It's also the sort of town where you can get from downtown to a small farm in 15 minutes of driving.

I grew up Seattle, and by the time I was leaving I was so sick of the traffic.  I love our little slice of rural life, but there are also some things that I will always want somewhat near me: a UU church, a place to see live performance, access to local shops and not just big box stores, a public library, good restaurants and coffee shops, and a fabric store.  I could live without them, and I would if I had to, but I am glad to not have to give them up.  This town is a wonderful balance for me.

Urban, suburban, and rural are the only categories we talk about anymore.  Technically, we're suburban.  But what happened to the category of "Town"?  I love my town/small city.

Day 14 of Gratitude: Head, Hearts, and Hands

Today I am grateful for a varied work life that keeps our whole selves busy and active.  I think of this sometimes when I am planning our To Do Lists or packing for a time away from home:

What is our Head Work right now?  What are we learning, reading, thinking about?

What is our Heart Work right now?  What is calling us to care for others, feel beauty, express ourselves?

What is our Hand Work right now?  What are we making, doing, and building?

(And then there is also Body Work, which is running, playing, jumping, etc - but that doesn't fit into my "H - Work" alliteration theme.)

I know many people - adults and children - end up in routines that specialize in one of those types of work, but I personally feel out of balance whenever I'm too much in Head, Heart, Hands, or Body.  My job, home, and our homeschooling are so wonderful because they all allow for a balanced approach to the types of work in our lives.

Today I spent time comforting a sick child, driving to and from a meeting about 70 miles away from home, meeting with colleagues for mutual support, giving a presentation to colleagues about systems theory and a specific book we had read together (How Your Church Family Works - great book), ruminating on a passing comment that caused me some anxiety and self-reflection, meeting with the youth advisors in my congregation for a check-in and planning meeting, reading another study book (Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times), supervising a child with Spanish and math schoolwork, watching a nature documentary with a sick child, washing dishes, folding and hanging laundry, cooking dinner, knitting a hat, emailing, playing Words with Friends, watching Dexter with my husband, reading blog posts, ranting to my husband about said blog posts, writing thank you notes, and tidying up and sweeping in my home.

With a life as varied and rich as that, no part of me has a chance to atrophy or get out of balance.  I am very grateful for the sheer variety life provides.

Day 13 of Gratitude: Dance

Tonight the family got to see Le Ballet Jazz de Montreal.  Despite the challenges of taking two young children to adult art, it was so worth it - especially the second half where they performed this piece "Harry".  Very interesting and accessible.

Ballet was a huge part of my young life.  Much as the song from Chorus Line says "Everything is beautiful at the ballet ... whenever you lift your arms someone is there ...".

I dreamed of being a ballerina.  I attended the best local dance school (a national level ballet school) from the age of 9 to the age of 16, with private lessons and intense dedication.

It didn't work out for me ... I am not built for it and no matter how hard you try (and I tried - anorexia and torn muscles and deformed feet to show for it) in the end I found it impossible to defeat my own physiology.  Spirit didn't beat out biology.

That hurt.  It was the greatest heartbreak of my young life - it far outweighed any sort of romantic heartbreak I could have experienced.  Giving up on ballet was giving up on my dream ... in a way it felt like giving up on myself.

For years I couldn't appreciate dance as an audience member, because it still hurt too much.  Now though, I can see the beauty again.  I can appreciate how marvelous the skill and dedication (and lucky physiology) of the dancers truly is, and I am glad to be able to appreciate the dance.

Gratitude Days 11 and 12: Veterans Day

(My husband and daughter, a couple years after he returned from Iraq.  She was our post-deployment baby, and I remember on this day as I watched them both walking ahead of me that I was pierced with gladness that he had come home and that she had been born.)

Today I am grateful for all who have served.  I believe in service, and I my time served in the National Guard was an important part of my life.  I met so many people that I never would have known if I hadn't taken time before college to attend Army training.  I'm extremely grateful for the experiences I had, the training I received, and the opportunity to serve my community in times of fire, flood, and riot.

I am also grateful today for my husband's safe return from his time serving in Iraq.  We met in the National Guard, but my time in was peacetime.  His luck was different, and his year of combat was something we never expected.  I am so proud of him for self-lessly and stoically honoring his commitments, and I am so grateful that he was one of the lucky ones to return relatively unscathed.

War is never a good thing.  I wish our leaders the wisdom and will to always work for peaceful solutions.  But for those who fight, it is different.  They serve, with the very safety of their bodies, hearts, and souls on the line.  Thank you to all who have sacrificed and served.

A few quotes I like from this article:

"The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war." -Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

"In war, there are no unwounded soldiers." -Jose Narosky

"We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude." -Cynthia Ozick

"How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!" -Maya Angelou

"When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?" -George Canning

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die." -G.K. Chesterton

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." -John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, 'Mother, what was war?'" -Eve Merriam

Day 10 of Gratitude: Home

I am so amazingly in love with this place that we found to call home.  Instead of talking wistfully of "someday" when we have "a few acres", now we actually have them and we're just busy enjoying and taking care of them.




I've been reading Making Home by Sharon Astyk (one of those rare books that I enjoyed so much from the library that I bought a new copy) and it has inspired me to appreciate and love my home even more.  It's also inspired me to want to do even better, to settle, to be a better steward, to plan for the future in responsible ways.



One immediate change I'm making is to break my dependence on the dryer.  If I have a "laundry day" once a week, the only way to get all the laundry done is to use the dryer.  But dryers use a lot of unnecessary electricity, when the same job could be done by passive energy and a sunny corner of my living room.  So I'm not doing the laundry once a week anymore, and am drying everything on my wooden drying rack.  That means I need to do laundry three or four times a week, and have a better system of storing dirty laundry as it waits its turn.  But I've made the changes, and everyone still has clean laundry as they need it, and our dryer now just sits empty.

I am very grateful to have a home, to have the resources that give me the freedom to make choices in how I want to live, and to have found this corner of the world to settle down on.

Day 9 of Gratitude: My Husband

Today is my 10th Anniversary of being Handfasted to my dear Husband.  We were handfasted in a lovely pagan and not-legally binding ceremony held at the Supreme Court House of our State (with the Chief Justice coming in to unlock the building and be there for us, but the officiant being a family friend and member of my mother's Full Moon Circle).  A few months later, we would be pushed to make the union legal because of my husband's impending deployment to Iraq, but the date we care about is the day we stood before friends and family and bound ourselves to each other with vows and symbolic cords, then jumped over a broom together.

We were young (I was only 23) and we jumped into it all very fast.  But we had been living together for a year, had decided to have a baby as I faced endometriosis and felt my fertility to be a ticking time bomb of scar tissue and troubles, had been strengthened/tested through the experience of miscarrying our first pregnancy, had bought a house, and were again 4 months pregnant by the time we took those vows to each other.

And since then those vows have been tested again and again: babies, deployments and war, graduate school, bouts with depression for both of us, escalating debt and money troubles, home daycare, illness, our bodies aging, stressful jobs, long hours and commutes, family members moving in with us, personal growth that doesn't always go in the same direction for both of us, snoring, different "love languages", my tendency to throw hissy-fits, and all the times I've had to pick up his dirty socks from all over the house.

But a commitment doesn't happen just once.  It's made over and over again, day to day, moment to moment.  It's a choice, and we make it.  Sometimes it's a hard choice, when I'm so mad I could spit fire.  And sometimes I marvel at his choice and how he can be so amazingly patient and supportive of me.

Did I find Prince Charming?  No, of course not.  But I've been plenty lucky, to find a good man to walk by my side for these years.

Once the realization is accepted
that even between the closest human beings 
Infinite distances continue to exist
A wonderful living side by side can grow up
If they succeed in loving the distance between them
Which makes it possible for each to see the other
Whole and against a wide sky.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Day 8 of 30 Days of Gratitude: Bulbs

Today I am reflecting on how grateful I feel for the amazing property of bulbs to be planted in the ground in this time when everything else is dying, and that they will be growing away and seem to just appear by magic in the spring.  When the rest of the garden is a dreary place, there is something so comforting to be pushing the garlic cloves into their new bed.

 

They have been planted and tucked into bed for the winter, and now we can look forward to lovely garlic scapes and garlic bulbs next year.

Day 7 of Gratitude

(History Lapbooks)

Today I am feeling grateful for the place we are finding ourselves in with our homeschooling right now.  Although I know this won't last forever, I am very grateful that these days it feels easy, that we have the right pace and routine down, that the kids are (mostly) doing all things they are interested in and are excited about learning, and that we have found resources that are working.  It feels like we have a good balance of time with other kids, time alone, structured time, flexible time, and time to just Be.

When it's working like this, it feels so great.


(FieldTrips)