Category: Mindfulness

Happy New Year!

“Where is the green?” you ask. Well, if you have a true passion for green, for what plants do, this is IT….the reason for it all, what keeps it all going and yes, it’s actually pretty ugly, unless you are into tans and earth tones! The soybean fields are turning yellow now in the midwest, and when they are ready to harvest, they look like this, leaves shriveled and dead, little dry fuzzy seed pods full of hard nuggets of creamy gold. The source of animal feeds, soy milk, tofu and hundreds of other things that I am not even aware of. Our native ancestors probably ate corn and beans and buffalo. We drink most of our corn as colas sweetened with corn syrup and eat cow fed with soy meal. Anyway, I love the harvest. One of these nights I’ll have to go for a drive to see the combine lights at night and hear the whir of the harvest being gathered in.

I’ve actually been home from Poland for about a month now. The transition has been slow. It’s been nice to blog about it all…stretching it out as long as possible, but now it’s time to refocus on Ames and home and my responsibilities. I’m still not sure what my next step is, but I have the bills paid, suitcase unpacked and put away and I’ve gotten my computer going to work on my masters research proposal.

I’ve also been trying to work on the little investment things. You know, the little things that if you don’t do them, it’s really no big deal, but if you let them go for 2-3 years, they start to multiply like mice and all of a sudden you feel like you’ve lost your life: filing, planning for the future, deep cleaning, dejunking, making a medical records file, knowing the phone numbers for all your credit cards, making a photo copy of your passport, etc. I have been a Franklin Covey planning person for a long time, and yeah, usually about half my daily pages wind up blank at the end of the year, and I am trying to remedy that too. Just trying to get control in general. Like a good Covey girl, I’ve worked on my mission statement. For a while it has been: I own, manage and enjoy my life in tune with God. Lately though, I have been fiddling with the word “own”. It meant that I act responsible for my life, I don’t hide from my stuff, I own up to who I am, both good and bad, but really God loans us a life, so should I really think about owning it? Maybe a better word would be “steward”, used as a verb. So I am thinking about stewarding these days. I read in John this morning, 15th chapter, where Jesus said he would no longer call his disciples “servants”. He began then to call them friends. I like that term, the friends of Jesus. Maybe I should explore that idea some more too.

Sorry for the disappearance lately, but I was on vacation to Colorado and it was fantastic! I’ll catch up after the laundry gets done! Hope you had a wonderful 4th of July like I did!

Ok, I know Memorial Day is getting long past, but I still have a few things to write about the weekend. Have you ever heard a jenny wren sing? At my sister’s cottage, there are always what we call Jenny wrens, although officially I think they are house wrens. Tiny packages of bird, they are so full of energy and song, it’s like a non-stop one bird concert. I’ve never been sure what makes them want to sing like that, but whatever it is, I want some of it! Maybe being so small is such a blessing, it just makes you want to sing.

Some people say that three year olds can be too loud, but I say, they’re just checking out their voices, taking them for the many needed test runs, because, after all, you want to be able to roar with the tigers when the occasion arises, right?