If I could add another 30 or even 60 days to my mindfulness project, perhaps I could grab complete control over the distracting beeps, bleeps and burps. Maybe. Maybe not. The calendar and life-responsibilities, however, won’t give me those extra 30 to 60 days.
So I decided to wrap the final days with a contemplative retreat at a nearby monastery where retreatants vow to not speak during their stay.
Yes, Edward Parone owned some celebrity and great respect from many in the world of entertainment — something I never knew until much later in our friendship. But he retired from all of that. His choice of retirement venue said it all — an unremarkable old adobe casita among a few other old adobes on a large ranch in Nambe, New Mexico.
“I promise to forego lust, gluttony, greed and sloth this year…”
That quote is definitely not mine. But they are the final four of the seven deadly sins that build annual New Year’s resolutions lists. They are the corporal sins, or sins of the body.
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This floodgate of what I now call “sparks of light from the prism” amaze me. It is everywhere. I find good deeds in my newspaper’s letters to the editor, on Facebook, in books I’m given, and from random discoveries. A heightened awareness of good seems to foster more good. It also spins my Irish temper into an Irish toast. What would once have given me cause to jump all over some nincompoop now coerce me into smiles and humor.
Once again, it proved to me that during these times of challenge and change, forward movement fueled by positive words and vision naturally shuns opposing wills draped in negativity and self-service.
Today this wildly off-balance pendulum struck my personal life. Oh, there was no catastrophic tragedy, just a realization that things aren’t like they were or how I want them. Yes, I’m one of those former middle class Americans trying to find my way through the maze. I feel like Jack in the Jack in The Box commercial who whines, “I am so tired of this recession.”
Then I received a gift. An absolutely free gift—probably from bird poop.
The Muse Pallet 