Carol Varsalona is hosting our Spiritual Journey writing this month.
"Our writing community gathers together this month to celebrate summer. As your host, I offer the prompt, Nurturing Our Summer Souls, for you to ponder. Please see ... the digital art I designed with photos and artwork from Jan Annino, Donna Smith, Fran Haley, and myself. The poster shares different settings that open our hearts and expand our minds to new possibilities."
Much of the country is beginning their summer...and it is already halfway over here in Texas. Many of our schools finish just before Memorial Day; my librarian work calendar extends into June, and begins again on August second. I begin my part-time summer school work on Monday, and will spend the days off preparing for my daughter's return from Japan (with her husband!) and getting things in order before the new school year begins. July is spoken for, even as it's barely begun.
I have been restless this summer, what little I've had of it. My one attempt at a solo peaceful getaway in nature was foiled by heat, humidity, and insects. The neighborhood pool I prefer to frequent, just a block away, has been closed more days than open for various reasons, my new swimsuits barely used. In a desperate attempt to connect with the outdoors, I am spending a fair amount of my teacher paycheck on birdseed for a feeder hung from our unused playscape. I've spent hours gazing through my dirty kitchen window watching the antics of various winged species, avoiding cleaning that window and the rest of my house.
I anticipated this malaise, as it happens most summers in between school years-- the yearning to get stuff done, without the motivation or energy to do it. I had to really think about whether or not I've nurtured my soul this season. In some small ways, I have "filled my bucket" a bit:
Finding delight in my winged visitors to the birdfeeder
Lunch with a good friend
Getting lost in two good books
Several nights of satisfying sleep
A five-hour Zoom call with another good friend
Time to just...think
Drinking lots of water, eating sweet melons
A vineyard visit with yet another good friend
Do I feel filled to the brim? Not quite yet. But I do have four or five days a week in July to try. I'm hoping that finding order in my house will bring some peace to my soul.
Chris, when I started decluttering the house of unopened boxes, I felt a sigh of relief. Being organized is an essential element of life. It helps us find balance. I have learned that baby steps are needed so use the month of July as your steppingstone. You already have a head start as noticed in your poem. Thanks for joining in, Chris.
ReplyDeleteKeep filling that bucket bit by bit! I can so identify with your words - "the yearning to get stuff done, without the motivation or energy to do it." I remember how quickly the summer days could melt away.
ReplyDeleteLoved your list, and of course, I want to know about the two good books you read. I recently finished Irene Latham's book, D-39 and I'm loving recommending it to young readers in my life.
Chris, I often think about the need for order in our habitat as related to our functionality (well, and subsequent paralysis at being overwhelmed by the extent of what's needed to usher in said order). But now I am thinking about order in the mind...it's such a curious thing. I recall reading a book - not sure if it's The Glass Castle by Jeannette Wall, but that seems right; you may know - where a child raised in total clutter couldn't really find peace as an adult until retuning to the parents' home, where she (?) slept deeply and soundly for the first time in years. This also reminds me of cbm checks with a student who labored and tripped over the timed reading in a silent room, a condition set to try to help him, yet when his boisterous class returned unexpectedly during the timed read, the student suddenly read with smooth flow at a steady rate. It comes down to a matter of your norm being your norm; a counselor friend of mine said that for this child, the chaos of home was his norm. He knew how to function in noise and disorder. So much more to be said there... but I say all of that just to say for most of us, I think, it is a matter of determining what our balance needs to be vs. the one we desire! I am much like you with the dissonance between what I want and envision vs. what the soul or spirit needs most. It's a hard blance to strike, for it shifts constantly. I've been celebrating one or two small things done each day in connection with a bigger project. Example: the garage needs to be decluttered. I tend to want to power through in 1-2 days, to check it off my list - DONE. But I can't depend on my family being ready to help when I am ready, for their schedules in service-related jobs can call them away at a moment's notice, and now there's the summer heat, which I DEFINITELY can't endure for long, and then my granddaughter coming for a sleepover, something that calls for stopping all just to savor...so this week just prior to her coming I cleared out one small corner, took stuff to the dump, recycled some antifreeze...and so I will maybe do another corner today...in the meantime stopping to catch up with blog commenting. I find that feel lighter even in the small steps of decluttering my surroundings (for it is a start) and suddenly - as a result? - I find a better flow in my writing. You lead me to explore these correlations more deeply, Chris. Your life - our lives - are so busy and full, with more to do than can ever be done, really, but we must not let that keep us from the actual living. That thought returns to me so often. Here's to letting the soul breathe (not in the heat and humidity for sure - in carving out a respite from it!) and maybe calling a window-cleaning service which can do in an hour what would take us an entire day, so that we can better see the birds...
ReplyDeleteChris, I hope you will take those July days to fill your cup to the brim. I love the list of bucket-fillers you brainstormed. That in itself is an act of self-care and savoring the summer. One of my favorite quotes is "If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough." ~Meister Eckhart
ReplyDeleteYour list reminded me of that quote. Peace to you for the rest of summer.