August 14--Moving Home

Traveling in the company of those we love is home in motion.  --Leigh Hunt

    With our offspring in Colorado and our first grandbaby on the way, my husband and I will be doing a lot of "home in motion." 

    Looking back over my life, I have truly been blessed to travel a lot with those I love. My mother took me to Paris and Rome, Scandinavia, Canary Islands, and Japan before she passed. There have been many lake trips with friends. I've organized and led retreats. My golfing/travel bud and I have been to Italy, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, the Pacific Northwest, and several other U.S. destinations. I'm doing a December Jamaica trip again this year, because I had so much fun there last winter with dear friends I love. Yes, the beach feels like "home" to me.

    Keep moving!

        Leta

Somewhere in Canada

August 13--Like It Or Not

Home is the place where, when

you have to go there, 

They have to take you in. 
--Robert Frost

    I think back to my college days when I would occasionally just go home. I may or may not have given notice. I expected my parents to be there and take me in. (I might add that they never went anywhere together.) That was home, nutty as it was. During my teenage years, I stayed overnight often with my brother and his wife to help her with their four small children. Even though my brother despised me his whole life, he took me in because he surely didn't want to help with his kids. That's yet another weird example of Frost's "home."

    There have been a few times when friends or family have refused to take me in. Sometimes it just doesn't fit the schedule or whatever. I get that. But I also know that I won't ask again, because it's not "home," not a place where "they have to take you in." For the most part, I have been blessed with many homes-away-from-home where friends and relatives have graciously welcomed me.

    I believe we each have a really good internal feeling of what "home" truly is. 

        Leta

August 12--Ordinary Days

The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.  --Thomas Moore 

    I've read a considerable amount on mindfulness and being present in the everyday acts of life. Those everyday activities ARE life. Yes, we have big events like births, marriages, deaths, vacations, new jobs, relocations, and such, but most days are fairly ordinary. I count on those "ordinary acts" like the morning cup of coffee, belly rubs for Barney, meals with my spouse, exercise, and an assortment of things I do each day to support my health (like flossing and taking vitamins). Enjoying the "ordinary" makes for contented days, which makes for a positive life flow. Those ordinary acts are certainly of great importance!

    Heading to the pool, 

        Leta

Progress daily on the new deck

August 11--Body Sense

Stay, stay at home, my heart and rest

Home-keeping hearts are the happiest

For those that wander they know not where

Are full of trouble and full of care

To stay home is the best.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    Well, "to stay home" is what I do the most, but, as the pandemic clearly showed us, there is also a need to wander away from home now and then. So I would vote for a suitable balance of home-away, maybe 80%-20% for me. 

    Let's talk about our body home. We all have one in order to exist here on Playground Earth. Often as a MELT/yoga teacher, students come to me after years of ignoring their bodies and thus becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the body's performance. I speak a lot about "body sense" being a very useful skill we develop over time.
    Here is some body-soul wisdom from Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue:

    Your mind can deceive you and put all kinds of barriers between you and your nature; but your body does not lie. Your body tells you, if you attend to it, how your life is and whether you are living from your soul or from the labyrinths of your negativity... The human body is the most complex, refined, and harmonious totality...
    Your body is, in essence, a crowd of different members who work in harmony to make your belonging in the world possible... The soul is not simply within the body, hidden somewhere within its recesses. The truth is rather the converse. Your body is in the soul, and the soul suffuses you completely.

    Try this--smile at yourself in the mirror today. 

        Leta

Family fun, joy for the body and soul!

August 10--Waiting by the Fireside

There is no place more delightful than one's own fireside.  --Cicero

    Having spent the past weekend away, sleeping in a hotel, not eating my usual foods, being out in the extreme heat for hours, I can certainly attest to Cicero's quote. Coming home to my very-happy-to-see-me dog and husband, it was such a relief to be in my own space with my peeps. 

    My niece and one of her twin sons have stopped by on a road trip from Arizona to Ohio. It was the first time any of my Miller family has come to our home in Kansas in decades. What a fun treat! 

    I am grateful for the golf trip and family visit because these are keeping me occupied while I await the arrival, any day now, of our grandbaby. 

        Leta

August 9--Right, Not Perfect

Home is any four walls that enclose the right person.  --Helen Rowland

    Because perfectionism has been such a huge character defect for me, and it seems to be so pervasive in our culture, I offer these words of author Shauna Niequist about the difference between a false perfection and a lived presence:

Let’s talk for a minute about perfect. . . . Perfect is brittle and unyielding, plastic, distant, more image than flesh. Perfect calls to mind stiffness, silicone, an aggressive and unimaginative relentlessness. Perfect and the hunt for it will ruin our lives—that’s for certain.

I’ve missed so much of my actual, human, beautiful, not-beautiful life trying to force things into perfect. But these days I’m coming to see that perfect is safe, controlled, managed. I’m finding myself drawn to mess, to darkness, to things that are loved to the point of shabbiness, or just wildly imperfect in their own gorgeous way. . . .

And so, instead: present. If perfect is plastic, present is rich, loamy soil. . . .

Present is living with your feet firmly grounded in reality, pale and uncertain as it may seem. Present is choosing to believe that your own life is worth investing deeply in, instead of waiting for some rare miracle or fairy tale. Present means we understand that the here and now is sacred, sacramental, threaded through with divinity even in its plainness. Especially in its plainness.

Present over perfect living is real over image, connecting over comparing, meaning over mania, depth over artifice. Present over perfect living is the risky and revolutionary belief that the world God has created is beautiful and valuable on its own terms, and that it doesn’t need to be zhuzzed up and fancy in order to be wonderful.

Sink deeply into this world as it stands. Breathe in the smell of rain and the scuff of leaves as they scrape across driveways on windy nights. This is where life is, not in some imaginary, photo-shopped dreamland. Here. Now. You, just as you are. Me, just as I am. This world, just as it is. This is the good stuff. This is the best stuff there is. Perfect has nothing on truly, completely, wide-eyed, open-souled present. (From Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, 8/6/22)

    Be here now,

        Leta

August 8--Our Mother Earth

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.  --Charles Dickens

    Today we look at home being our entire planet. 

    Watch this video titled "Down to Earth, The Astronauts' Perspective." 

    It is well worth the 30 minutes it takes, giving you an expanded appreciation of our magnificent earth home. It is quite cool to hear the awe, wonder, and love for Earth that the astronauts experience as they look down on our planet from the International Space Station. 

    Loving our Mother,

        Leta

It is that thin blue line that keeps us 
alive and protected from the sun!

Never, no, never did nature say one thing and wisdom another. 
--Edmond Burke