Mindfulness

 Can you believe June is already gone? They say times flies when you’re having fun, but I sure didn’t know that I was having that much fun this month. Nonetheless, it’s gone. When we’re not paying attention, living in the moment, time does fly.

You hear a lot about mindfulness these days. Basically it’s the process of focusing on the present moment and experiencing it fully. A monk said that if you’re washing dishes and looking ahead to your cup of tea, you are missing the experience of washing the dishes. So when you get the tea, you’re thinking about your next chore and not fully experience drinking the tea. Makes sense to me, because my mind is always three steps ahead of where I am.

I’ve known forever that I live life too fast, so that it passes me by without me experiencing the best of it. I need to slow down and savor the moment. You can accomplish that through meditation.

My brother asked me if I ever meditated, because he believes I can envision my ankle healing. Truth is I pray but I don’t meditate, and I see the two as similar. So today I’ve been working on envisioning my ankle healing and talking to the Lord about it—seems the best of both worlds do me.

Jacob is back from the ranch, full of tales of the copperhead they saw—his cousin jumped on his back—and a visit to a neighboring ranch where they have an owl that the foreman has trained to follow him. He found it as a baby in a puddle, nursed it to health. Jacob said the ranch kids were really kind to him, but they shot and gutted a rabbit for the owl to eat. And Jacob was turned off by that. I told him we’d send him to the ranch more often so that he could toughen up. But he was so tired today, and has a baseball game until ten tonight.

My Tomball kids are mostly “hanging out” this summer, and I hope to take Jacob down there for a week—he needs to “hang out” and be a kid.