We are in entertaining mode and at everyone else’s beck and call. ‘In preparation for the upcoming Word Lovers retreat, I shopped for almonds, Hershey’s nuggets, Cheddar cheese, and the weekend’s staple essentials—eggs, butter, coffee, juice. In concentrating on just that task, the task of planning and buying food for my retreat, the other things I had to get done receded and didn’t weigh on me. I could only do one thing at a time. I now not only delist, but I’ve learned to concentrate on only the most important things, and one thing at a time. Later, I prepared for the family, layering lasagna noodles with sauce and cheese, a servant to the present moment. We are servants in this world, a blessing to others if we can be receptive to where they are in their lives. No one is a stranger on this journey called life, especially if you accept them and allow them to enter into your life. Then you get a surprise—your own blessing in return. Hospitality, being in the moment, focus, acceptance, all those good things came to me when I just went with the flow.
Archive | February, 2015
30 Perfect Days Log Post 18, Growing Happy
W.B. Yeats said “We are happy when we’re growing.” In my book, this chapter was about preparing for a dinner party. For the quarterly meal, I 
chose to focus on the Alsatian region of France and Germany, now in France, and I encouraged everyone to bring any World War II memorabilia. I attempted to recreate a Laurel Run Cooking School pork recipe, thinking about my grandfather, who was a tank commander in Alsace during WWII. I was also thinking a lot about improvising the recipe and pulled Michael Ruhlman’s The Elements of Cooking off my shelf because I was recipe-less, as was Ruhlman, who cooks with passion and experience and produced a reference text rather than a cookbook. It makes me happy to create something unique in the kitchen, to respond to the ingredients to make something all my own and I grow as I do it. It’s more than an intellectual growth, it’s deeper than that. And it leads to great happiness when everyone sits down to eat the meal I created, the meal that came from my heart. These evenings are not just about eating and drinking; they’re also about trying new things, stretching the boundaries, surprising ourselves with what we can come up with. It feels like abundance.
30 Perfect Days Log Post 17, Learning to Fly
If I believed I could fly when I let go of the branch, life would be so much easier. If you’ve read 30 Perfect Days, Finding Abundance in Ordinary Life, you know that every chapter begins with a quote. For Day 17, I chose this one by C. JoyBell C.: “You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.” Even though my head thinks I should fly, my heart is afraid to go into the unknown. But if I allowed myself to go into the unknown, to follow an unfettered heart, with spread wings, miracles could happen. People who work in private on their art, their writing, their gardening, doing it for the love of it, yes, they should be celebrated, and watched. They are oblivious to the score because they’re in love with life and living authentically. They’re flying. Escape is okay. It reminds me I’m alive. Why aren’t we allowing ourselves to fly?