church

During my sabbatical, I have been visiting different churches.  It has been a lot of fun to see how others do things and I've picked up a number of good ideas.  I rarely get to do this on vacation generally because we are almost always in some remote location far away from any church.  My family does not respond well to: "Hey, let's go to a church that's about an hour from here that looks like it could hold about 50 people."  So we've enjoyed the sanctuary of nature on those occasions.

When all is said and done, the biggest draw of a church is the community.  After all, you can always listen to good music at home (although, in my mind, there is no substitute for live music), say prayers at home and do a great deal of spiritual reading.  You can also do community service without ever crossing into the doorway of a church.   But the kind of community you find in a strong church cannot be replicated anywhere.  A community that actually cares about how you are, a community that will help you when you are in need.

I heard a fine sermon today that, among other things, addressed the difference between being nice and being compassionate.  Lots of people know how to be nice or polite without much disclosure of who they really are or any serious attempt to connect with the other person.  Compassion is another story, an ability to read a person and know that all is not well or that they are, in fact, having a great day. There is a profound difference.

Fitness

Anyone who knows anything about exercise, knows that it is good for you.  I know that I am feeling better now that I am being more attentive to exercise but I now have ways to encourage myself, ways that allow me to have direct feedback that this is making a difference.  This may seem silly and unnecessary to those who have had good exercise routines for years but for me these devices are adding incentives and encouragement.  One is the Nike app which tells you how far you have walked and the rate at which you are walking.  Instead of doing my old routine which I knew was a mile, I can now walk all of over the neighborhood or any where else for that matter and I knew when I have completed my two miles and how best I did them.  I find this little gadget to be very helpful.  The other is a device called emWave made by an organization called Heart Math. This is a device that you install on your computer; there is an attachment that gets placed on your ear.  It reads not only your heart rate but your level of what they call coherence.  The idea is to try to be in high coherence.  A lot of executives use it and my doctor recommended it so that I could monitor my stress level.  It is way too complicated to explain here but it is a fun way to monitor whether or not the things you are doing to reduce stress, such as exercise, are actually working. For example, I have discovered that meditation at home is not as effective as yoga.  I am trying to adapt my practices so that I can gain the most benefit both spiritually and physically.

Little Miracles

While I was on the trip which my older daughter's 8th grade class took to DC, there was an incident that led to one of those little miracles of life.  There was a girl on the trip who had recently had surgery and had to be confined to a wheelchair for the duration of this adventure.  On Sunday, a wheel on the wheelchair had some sort of malfunction and that particular wheelchair could no longer be used.  The trip leader and several others were tearing their hair out trying to find a replacement but to no avail.  Rental shops were not open on the holiday weekend and so forth.   I was in the front of the bus so I was privy to the whole drama.  Suddenly I thought of our wheelchair at church and then managed to locate and call the nearest Episcopal Church to where we were. Not expecting to get an answer to a phone call on the Sunday afternoon of a holiday weekend, I was hoping to at least get an emergency phone number for the rector.  I was not especially looking forward to this call as Sunday afternoons are not good times to call clergy for things that on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of emergency rating falls at a -5, but I was willing to do it.  The first time I called, there was no answer but the recording did have an emergency number for the priest.  Good sign, I thought.  However, I had to call back after obtaining pen and paper.  The second time I called, much to my surprise, a woman answered, Sister Lydia.  Sister Lydia "just happened" to be in the office picking something up.  She could not have been more helpful.  The long and short of it is that they did have a wheelchair at the church and she was not only willing to wait for our school trip leader to pick it up, she negotiated a drop off time on Monday, which was Memorial Day.  Blessings to Sister Lydia of St. Paul's K Street in our nation's capital!

Train Adventures continued

I was on the phone today with someone who asked about the man on the train so I am posting.  I have not encountered many people who can talk nonstop for 6 hours but that day on the train was an exception.  I finally decided to "practice empathy".  So I thought, here's a guy who has not seen his kids in a long time.  He and his ex-wife have a hostile relationship.  He is a recovering alcohlic (stated in a very colorful way - saying he ends up hanging from a tree when he drinks - sipping an orange juice) and a nervous wreck (not stated) about walking into the upcoming situation.  So...that was more or less the end of it.  I did have to laugh when we arrived in Toledo and he stared out the window saying: "I've never seen any place so f..ing flat in my life!"  He was a character!   Everyone including my unintended buddy, did eventually fall asleep.   It was like a giant slumber party!  The night ride was magical.  I did actually sleep but woke up when the train slowed, coming into cities where it had stops.  It was a bit like riding the Polar Express without the snow, just lots of mysterious old fashioned buildings and lights.  I'd wake up for a bit, let the magic soak in and return to my fetal position on the two seats I had.  I rode the Amtrack bus from Toledo to Ann Arbor with a woman who worked with Caesar Chavez in the 1970's in California.  Now SHE was interesting!

Back home, I am returning to the sabbatical routine that I had going before embarking on my trip out east.  The weather is gorgeous; it is good to see my family.  
 

Train Adventures

When I left Baltimore to go to New York, I took the Megabus for $9.00. I spent the night with my niece and then headed once again on the Megabus to Boston for yet another $9.00. I am now on the train going from Boston to Ann Arbor, the cheapest way I could find to complete this significant loop I have been traveling for the past ten days. It has been a long time since I have traveled by train and I must say it is great. The scenery fed my soul as we followed a river for a good bit of the way. I saw herons and other birds on the many ponds and lakes we passed. It was very serene until this 40 something Robert De Niro wanna be, in every way imaginable, started yammering with two guys in the seat across from me. His very colorful language, with a very strong Boston accent, flooded the train car. I found all of this to be fairly entertaining until he took a look at the book I was clutching and said "Great book, you're reading. I've read it.". "Really?", I said, impressed that he had actually finished an entire sentence without using the F word. As I contemplated the rather absurd thought of this guy reading Marcus Borg's "Reading the Bible Again for the First Time", I suddenly had a very unpleasant epiphany. I glared at him with my very best power thought: don't you even think about sitting next to me! When I heard him going on with the guys about having to ride the f--ing train all the way to Michigan, I started plotting ways to fill the extra seat with all kinds of immovable objects. Lord have mercy. This could be a very long night.

Anam Cara

One of my favorite books on Celtic spirituality is John O'Donohue's book Anam Cara. Anam Cara means soul friend. I have spent five days with a friend I've known longer than any others, since second grade! She is a true anam cara. What a rich time this has been - just the two of us talking about old times and current times. While I sometimes bemoan the fact that my soul friends are spread all over the country in Baltimore, Boston, western MA and Seattle, I feel blessed to have these rich relationships in my life as I know there are many people who do not have any friendships with this kind of depth. Friendships take time and so I spend as much time as possible talking on the phone with my friends which is in reality not that much time. I am busy; they are busy so it is often hard to find time to connect. Nonetheless, for my own spiritual and mental health, I want to make this a priority. They are circles of love without which I cannot survive.

On the Road with The Daily Office

For those of us who try to read the Daily Office on a regular basis, travel can become a problem, at least for me. My copy of the Office readings is large and cumbersome. On this particular trip, in which every ounce made a difference, I finally decided to investigate the online version from the Mission of St. Clare. I love it! They even have an app! Everything is right there so gone are the days of flipping around pages and hauling large books. Thanks to the Mission of St. Clare, I can easily keep up with the Daily Office while on the road.