On Day 21 of my 30 Perfect Day project, I quoted Mahatma Gandhi, who said “A living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.” Hurricane Sandy came storming into Ohio. We couldn’t spend a bitterly cold night at home without heat, so we headed to daughter Melissa’s house with pizzas from our thawing freezer. I spent some time on that dreary evening working on some Artist’s Way exercises for class the next day. Cameron wrote “By seeking the creator within and embracing our own gift of creativity, we learn to be spiritual in this world, to trust that God is good and so are we and is all of creation.” I am much more spiritually connected than I was in my self-imposed prison of fifteen years ago. I’m not unique in turning within and seeking God as death comes closer, and it’s also common for people to seek out their creative gifts when life is established and the big missions in life, raising a family or building a career, are manifested. The storm outside doesn’t touch me. We ride out the storm together. We’ve been doing it for a long time. Remembering storms in your life helps you understand who you are. How have you ridden out the storms in your life? For more about finding abundance in ordinary life, go to https://www.claudiajtaller.com/30-perfect-days-finding-abundance-in-everyday-life/.
Log Post 20, Week 20–Sacred Nature
Many apologies for posting on Sunday this time—life gets in the way, and we have to respect that (besides, I wondered if more people pay attention on Mondays than on Fridays). In the 20th chapter of 30 Perfect Days, called “Sacred Nature,” I quote Margaret Atwood, who said that at the end of the day in the spring, we should smell like mud. Now that the snow is starting to melt and I might just see crocuses in a few days, I can think about immersing in the outdoors. I would rather walk in the woods than go to church, but it’s a really good day when I can do both. I know God’s with us as we walk and talk and experience the outdoors. What does the longing to live in the woods, away from civilization, mean? In Thoreau’s Walden, Thoreau journals about living by one’s self and being with God and Nature at Walden Pond. I still remember the solitude, reflection, ease of day that Cynthia Huntington wrote about in The Salt House: A Summer on the Dunes of Cape Cod – I must have read that book 20 years ago, and I don’t own it. I once read a book about storms in the Outer Banks written by Henry Beston called The Outermost House, where a man tried to be faithful in telling his experience of living within nature. Annie Dillard writes about hiking through the woods and noticing the daily changes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. These memoirs are slow, meandering, and thoughtful, and I like them just the way they are—poetry in nature put on paper. What are your favorite outdoor spaces, your sacred spaces? Do you experience God in your sacred space? For more on the book, go to https://www.claudiajtaller.com/30-perfect-days-finding-abundance-in-everyday-life/.
30 Perfect Days Log Post 19, No One’s a Stranger
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.
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?