Update #2 -- Noticing time for ME

ME time view at the Dirt Bag Café

With home renos underway, my new job as "baking coordinator" at L'Arche Day Program, the greenhouse going full tilt and a number of other projects underway, it's been really challenging this month to find any ME time in this ME year. Even finding my way to my prayer chair is impossible this week as it's covered in painting cloths! And meditation while dog-walking doesn't seem to work. The birds' spring songs and mating celebrations are too distracting... or maybe they are my meditation! Oops, watch out for the puddles!

Even so, yesterday, while chauffeuring my daughter to an appointment, I had a lovely hour of ME time with a latte and some letter writing at the Dirt Bag Café. And wouldn't you know it, in the evening I ended up there a second time, listening to my kids perform at the Café's "Open Mic" evening.

Perhaps the thing about ME time isn't setting a time and place for it, but just recognizing it for what it is as it happens -- acknowledging a moment of happiness, peace or goodness in the moment. And if that's the case, life is full of ME time... the lunch I had with a friend, the light in the sky after last night's board meeting, seeing the sun on the trees when I got up this morning, and enjoying Shadow dog's perky little jog in the spring sunshine (finally!)

ME time can be seconds, minutes, or hours. The trick is to notice when it happens, and to live the moment!

A prayer for rain

We've been away since July 1st, and in that time we have been following the situation in BC's interior with increasing concern. The smoke from the forest fires that are threatening communities in the Cariboo region is drifting across the western provinces now, and there's an out-of-control blaze near Banff, reminding us that all is definitely not well with our environment if large swathes of forest are burning and adding greenhouse gases to our planet's already overburdened atmosphere. And for most of us, there's nothing we can do about it, really, except pray for those most affected by the fires, for the fire crews, and for our earth as a whole.

So I offer, once again, a prayer for rain: