the ordinary

                                               (today- playing in Tara's leaf pile)
"Our lives are at once ordinary and mythical. we live and die, age beautifully or full of wrinkles. We wake in the morning , buy yellow cheese, and hope we have enough money to pay for it. At the same instant we have these magnificent hearts that pump through all  sorrow and all winters we are alive on the earth."                  -Natalie Goldberg

Lately I have been feeling very introspective. I don't know if it's because the end of the year is nearing or...if it's because I have a birthday coming up (43 is just around the corner) or...because we are smack in the middle of another move. But-whatever the reason-I find myself assessing what I really want, the person I want to become and taking stock of my life. Not the surface things...but the deep down under my skin kind of things. I have been  writing pages and pages in my journal and when I really distill the essence of what I want, it is this: no matter what I am doing...I want to see the sacred in the ordinary. I want to see the pure magic in a pile of golden leaves, little toes painted blue and...sunlight. It is the everyday moments that comprise the mythical...

I want to live that. Not some day...but right now.

everyday Zen

(yesterday morning at the park)

“This is the Zen approach: nothing is there to be done. There is nothing to do. One has just to be."

                                                                                     -Osho

(afternoon nesting with books + a cup of tea)

I keep on saying to myself that I will practice slowing down once things have slowed down...sigh. But what I really need to do is to slow down right now!! Easier said than done. I sometimes find myself wishing for  this imaginary time and place where ...things are quiet, static...then I can practice mindfulness, meditate, live in the moment instead of ...rushing frantically from place to place, researching homes and schools and on and on. I know better...I really do:)

                                              (working in my studio last night)

So...I have been making a very conscious effort to slow down now...at a time when I feel completely frantic and stressed. Plans that we have been working on for months and months have fell through and...changed. It's not a bad thing...just a change. Which equals stress!! So I figure that now is the perfect time to practice mindfulness...not when I have no stress and am up on a mountaintop somewhere:) Right???