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Showing posts from June, 2013

A little chaos is good for the soul ... right?

The evening started off wrong, and got worse. The commuter train, normally so reliable, had a thirty-minute delay due to a fire of unspecified source and location. It's so annoying when you never find out what really, really happened! We want all the details, and we never get them. But that's fine. After a looooong wait on the platform, I did manage to squeeze onto a train, with several hundred other people, where I stood with my face practically jammed into a large man's sweaty armpit.  Ah, the disadvantages of being short. At home, it was a lively scene. Somehow our wireless router, as well as our four laptops, had all been hacked. I assume this is unrelated to the train fire, haha.  Family members clutched their cellphones, in various stages of having credit cards canceled and bank accounts checked. Microsoft charged us several hundred dollars to clear everything up. It was a costly security lesson. Then I went into the kitchen. There, in a shoebox on the counter,

Time for the desert?

Next week I will be heading out to Wisconsin, for the Order of Julian's annual affiliates' retreat and JulianFest weekend. Nearly three days will be spent in silence before our festive weekend begins. Despite the retreat center's beautiful location on Lake Oconomowoc, I think of this retreat as my annual time in the desert. I look forward to the silence. And so I have begun to develop piles of items to pack. Among these are:       Books       Journals I need to read       Candles (the battery-powered type)       Music for meditation       Needlework        My journal        My laptop       Materials for planning a haiku retreat.         Hmmm. God? Where did I put him? Is he in one of the piles? Am I going to have time to listen to him, or will I be totally occupied with "stuff"? This is a real danger with me: that I will leave no real time to listen for anything the Holy Spirit may wish to say. Lord, give me the patience, the stilln