Common Miracles, Week #25: In love with the season

 “Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior’s world.”
–Pema Chodron

Fall continues to woo me... completely ordinary things surround me, but I am in love with them all. (Well, except for the dark. The dark I am less in love with...) The color variety, the crispness, the sweaters and boots, the fall flavors, the holiday anticipation, the pheasants strutting around the fields... it's all quite up my alley.

I am getting my iTunes all squared away again (things have been iffy in the computer world, but are definitely looking up!), and loving getting reacquainted with music I haven't seen/heard in months. Kinda cool, the memories associated with songs. I love that (mostly). Nothing (maybe other than some specific smells) can transport me so quickly to a time and place.

I read Mona Simpson's tribute to Steve Jobs yesterday in the NYTimes and had a quiet cry at my keyboard... a lovely piece, and oddly intimate. I didn't expect to be so moved by her words, by her telling of his last days and hours. 

The Beth Moore study I'm in right now isn't one of my favorites--it will be hard to top Fruit of the Spirit from last spring--but there are still nuggets in the mix... this morning was devoted to the Lord's Prayer, how to pray, etc., and that's my speed. I especially was internally nodding when she talked about praying without being results-oriented. I wasn't nodding because I know this and live this, but because I needed to be reminded of that fact. Pray to be in His will, not to have my will magically imposed on the world. Nuts. I mean, good reminder.

A warm mug of coffee is currently juicing me up to go mow/pick up leaves. Husband got me a wee espresso maker for my birthday--for a non-coffee-drinker, he does indulge my habits!--and I mastered the espresso this morning. Now on to the frothing of the milk... the little rituals of our mornings are quite soothing to me, especially on mornings such as this, where autopilot is really the only mode between 6 and 7 a.m. If I actually had to think? Not so good...

Words that pop up in multiple places around the same time always feel like tiny knock-knocks on my brain: Pay attention, Sher. I love that. I'm not talking about those silly urban memes like Lionel Ritchie's picture with the lyrics from "Hello" underneath it--which seems to come around every six months in a flurry like it was just discovered for the first time. No, I'm talking about seeing words, similar if not exactly the same, in very disparate places. Happens to me all the time. I dig it.

Two recent examples:

Kurt Vonnegut quote

Some times you need to see things multiple times (at least I do) to Get It. I'm trying to lean in more closely and listen, but some days my internal chat is turned up too high and things whiz by unnoticed... Working on it...

That's my list for this day. I feel utterly blessed to look out my window and see sunshine and colorful leaves. Now to go mow them up!

To read about the Common Miracle project and how it began, go here.