On the Way to Now

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.   Rumi

The bumper sticker I picked up last weekend at a fair trade market in Jackson, Mississippi. All week I’ve been turning it over in my head and heart.

What is the beauty I love?

What is the beauty of what I love?

What does it mean to do it?

I’ve thought about learning. I like that. And balance. Yep. Mindfulness. They’re all words. What do they mean? Words are always shifting on me.

This morning I say good-bye (and breathed a sigh of relief) to one brother after his two week stay at my house. It’s not easy for me to share a house where I’ve lived alone for nearly two decades. But there were times I enjoyed his presence. He reminded me of my dad.

Then Sunday breakfast with my other brother. Our routine for the last seven years. It’s an hour and a half  I look forward to each week. Our check in time…touching base, sharing memories and fears and dreams. Then we each go our way until the next Sunday.

After breakfast I take a walk in the manicured gardens behind an art gallery on this fresh fall day.

Now I’m at home, reading The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah for book club next week. But I have to stop every twenty minutes or so as she describes the Nazi encroachment.

I turn on the television. The New Orleans Saints are losing and there’s too much political discourse on the news channels. I go outside to water my fall vegetable garden.

This week has not been easy. Conflicts with my brother as we work at sharing space. Confrontations with five excessively absent students via repeated emails. A less than respectful political “discussion” with long time friends. These are things that can distress me for days as I replay them over and over in my head.

But they didn’t. I felt the tension and it was over. I had let it go.

Yesterday I stood in line for an hour to vote early. A peaceful, diverse line of Americans exercising their right to vote. A day of blue sky. I loved it.

What is the beauty of what I love…

NOW…right now. And me, participating in it with mindfulness and balance.

Writing topic…What does the Rumi quote mean to you?