Burning the Midnight Oil

On one of those days when it's hard to find time to sit down and write.

It was another 99 degree day, and people seem more irritable than usual. I saw that today while driving. I'm not sure if it's just that people are learning how to share the world again after so much time at home with the Covid restrictions, the heat, or both. But things feel wiggy out there.

I was driving in the city to pick up my son for a lunch date and had a run in with an 18-wheeler on a narrow side street with cars parked on both sides of the street. The truck did not need to be there, and probably should not have been. It's destination was an avenue that it could have reached by bigger roads. The truck turned in front of me from Front street, and I could not believe the driver was going to try to navigate the narrow streets ahead, one of which was unexpectedly closed because of construction on a new building. The GPS rerouted down the only street available, which required the truck to make an impossible, sharp right turn onto another narrow street with cars parked on both sides.

The truck missed its mark and began to back up. I was right behind it with another car behind mine, riding my bumper. There was another car and a small FedEx truck behind that one. None of the vehicles behind mine seemed to want to back up, and I felt like a slab of liverwurst between two slices of rye. There really wasn't anywhere to go, and the truck in front of me continued to back up.

I'm not one to use my horn much, but I ended up laying on the horn until the truck in front of me stopped. The car behind mine, nearly as stuck as I was with two vehicles behind it not backing up, pulled to the side so I could continue to back up. The truck finally righted itself and somehow made it down the narrow street. The car in front of the FedEx truck cut off the car that pulled to the side, to make a left hand turn the wrong way down a one-way street. The FedEx truck pulled in front of the car who pulled to the side and also cut that driver off. 

I took a deep breath. Sometimes it's hard to believe what people do, the unthinking discourtesy that creates difficult and sometimes dangerous situations. I'm thinking about this again as I reflect on the day and put to bed the things I want to leave here and not carry into tomorrow.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

It's in the mid-90s here today, and normally I'd be complaining about the heat.

But as I notice what's going on in the Pacific Northwest, I feel fortunate that it is only 94 degrees here today. Perspective is a beautiful thing.

I had a relative once, I'm sure everyone has this relative, who said, "It's not so bad that it can't get worse." I prefer to think in positives rather than negatives, so I'm likely instead to notice how fortunate I am and to celebrate all the things for which I am grateful. And they are many. I need to keep noticing in order to see them.

It's easy to get lost in the heat of the moment.

So an important spiritual discipline for me is presence. I'd started to write "giving thanks," but there's a layer beneath that is foundational. Nothing else is possible without presence. 

I'm thinking about cherries today. 

I'm eating them also. They're one of my favorite fruits and I always feel so fortunate when cherry season comes around. I remember when I was a little girl, watching my mom devour with delight huge handfuls when they were in season. Lately, she's been telling a story about how when she was little, she used to stuff herself with cherries because she loved them so much. I think one of the reasons I love them so much is because of that memory I have from childhood of my mother's delight and enjoyment. 

It's been nearly 20 years since I visited Washington state for the first time. I was out there for a workshop and it was cherry season. Farm stands lined the roads with freshly-picked cherries for sale. It was the first time I tried Rainier cherries and I fell in love with their sweet juiciness. I have no idea how much I ate, but I really could not get enough of them, especially at the height of ripeness, freshly picked from the tree. 

I watched the news yesterday with some agony as they filmed the shriveled cherry crop, anticipating exceptional losses due to the heat. Cherry season has just begun and they are in the stores for now, but I imagine a short season, and probably a disrupted apple season if this weather continues.

So the cherries on my counter are treasure. 

The temperature here is now 97 degrees. Still, we are fortunate when compared with others. I read that it's nearly 120 degrees in Siberia. Here I've got the shades lowered where the sun is shining. I move around the house with the sun. Every now and then I turn on the AC for a few minutes. Oddly, the fans and the shades are keeping my apartment comfortable. I marvel at that. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.      

  

Noticing the Small Things

There are days that I look at my morning journal writing and wonder how I can pick myself up and move through the day.

I see the grief, the challenges, the apparent lack of tools in my toolbox. The tricky thing is that truth is bound up with illusion here. Grief is real. Challenge is a mix of truth and illusion. And tools - I have many. Heck, I teach this stuff. We teach what we need to learn, and that personal experience with whatever it is makes for authentic teaching. 

When the big picture feels overwhelming, I tend to focus in on small things. The way I see it is as a superpower, like a comic book character whose eye is suddenly the focus of the artist and she shows through her illustrations how the power works. 

It looks something like this - the edges of my vision begin to darken as my super focus begins to activate. All the distraction and disruption are absorbed by that darkness and quieting, as my eye catches a small pleasure in front of me that grows to fill my whole field of vision. It is all I can see for a time. Its abundance reorients my thinking.   

So, the unopened bag of cherries in my fridge becomes joy that is just waiting for me to reach for it. The sprigs of tarragon in the fridge become potential that is waiting for me to transform it into something amazing. The text message I just sent my son about getting together this week becomes a thread of connection. 

Joy. Potential. Connection.

The reorientation of my thinking. 

Neither grief nor challenge disappears completely. They simply become something other than the focus when I am vulnerable to thoughts that can undermine my wholeness. 

During yesterday's preaching I was working with two stories, one from the Old Testament and one from the New. The first in Lamentations was easy to relate to compared to the second from Mark's gospel about two miraculous cures. We know the lament so well. The cure feels more elusive. The grace of the second story, even though it's harder to relate to, has to do with Jesus helping us to see what had, before, been hidden from our eyes - the embodied presence of grace offering a healing touch to an impossible situation.

I asked, "What becomes possible when we trust grace to be present? To touch a situation with a healing presence? " 

It becomes possible to tell a healing story, even before healing happens. The story makes it come alive for us, enables us to see it, and if we can see it, we can move toward it.   

A healing story makes something other than the present challenge and grief our primary experience. It enables healing to begin as our thoughts imagine something else. 

And if we can see it, we can move toward it.

A Hundred Years of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. 

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

In the Nighttime Quiet

In the nighttime quiet, I close my eyes and rest.

Lay down the questions of the day and 

My footfalls on wood floors quest

For bed.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

It Just Is

I surprised a friend today when I pulled out an entrelac piece I've been working on. 

Entrelac is a complicated knitting method that requires intense focus and concentration. It is not forgiving, but it produces a beautiful result. I learned how to do it about 15 years ago when I took a class after I took up knitting again. It was a wonderful challenge. I produced several pieces, but the last piece I was working on was my favorite. I splurged on a beautiful wool. And it's close to being done. Actually, I haven't worked on it for years, but I pulled it out with the intention of finally finishing it.

As I was examining the piece, I noticed several places where it appeared that I'd dropped a stitch. Normally, it's a fairly easy fix if you catch it quickly, but in a complex pattern like entrelac, it's devastating. As I looked closer, I found four places where the piece had begun to come apart. That's the effect of a dropped stitch. It can unravel the whole work. 

Except I did not drop a stitch. The yarn broke. 

And the more I looked at it and tried to fix it, the more it unraveled. 

It's heartbreaking. And there's really nothing to do but toss the piece. I have another like it, another favorite. Another heartbreak. I have it still folded up somewhere in my bedroom because the thought of throwing it away is so difficult. 

Letting go is hard. 

As I held that beautiful knitwork piece in my hands today, I saw in it all the situations and things and relationships I've had to let go of in life. There was grief, but there also was a feeling of release as I stood there, holding this beautiful piece of work I had put so much of myself into, so much time, so much effort, something that was unraveling due to no fault of my own. The material simply is broken, and there was no way to anticipate it. 

It just is. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Simple, Everyday Pleasures

I look around my house, and it is filled with simple, everyday pleasures.

The thought strikes me as I get up from the kitchen table to brew more tea. Everywhere my eye falls, there's something that brings me joy. Two small dishes on a wooden board on the stove - one has a few shrimp thawing and the other has a few pieces of frozen mango thawing. They're for today's installment of taco week. The half jar of freshly made strawberry jam I pick up from the fridge to put on a piece of toast. A small piece of a good gouda cheese that I'll have with the toast and jam and tea. The succulent garden given by a friend last month that is growing wild on my kitchen table. 

I pause thoughts around taming it.

Piles of paper everywhere, chaos that mirrors my inner world of thoughts, ideas, writing projects. The sprawl of work into my kitchen as the pandemic invited me to reshape my working practice. My kitchen became a library, writing room, video studio, office, classroom, meeting space, place of dreaming.

My kitchen's always been a place of dreaming.

On the window of my back door, there's a suction cup with a small piece of glass hanging there. It's what's left of my son's Eagle Scout project. He renovated a courtyard space in our church to create a reflection garden. One of the scout moms found two or three inexpensive wind chimes to put in the space, and the scoutmaster brought a plaster eagle in flight that they painted gold and hung in the space. When the church building was being renovated and the courtyard garden became part the re-design as a large, indoor solarium, someone wrapped up several items and returned them to me after the demolition - two wind chimes, and the gold-painted eagle. I gave the eagle to my son. He told me to keep the wind chimes. They were old and well-weathered. One of them had a swallowtail butterfly painted on the glass. I transformed it into something I could hang in the east to filter morning light just by cutting it away from the original and adding fishing line and a suction cup hook. I gave the other away.

As I look around, I notice many of the things that bring me joy are transformed pieces of what once had been beautiful and useful but eventually let go. Essence pieces of something once loved and somehow brought into a newer expression. What am I trying to say here? That I am surrounded with little pieces of beauty that take me back or drive me forward? That also express something about my present? There's something here. I know what it is in my bones,  but to put it into words? I have language in my preaching vernacular - little expressions of death and resurrection, death and rebirth, destruction and creation, new form emerging from the old. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Moonlight on the Water

I drove down to the beach today to watch the full moon rise. 

It was a gorgeous day - clear and sunny, cool and breezy for a June afternoon. Today's full moon is close enough to perigee that it's appearing as a "super moon," and I thought it would be beautiful and breathtaking to behold, rising over the Atlantic Ocean off the Jersey shore. 

Everything set up beautifully. As the sun was sinking in the west, the eastern sky over the ocean took on color - pink, lavender, periwinkle. And then . . . clouds began to roll in from the south east, just where the moon would be rising. 

I waited.

The sky inland was clear. The sky north, up the coast was clear. The moon rose behind clouds that were so thick that I could not see the light or glow behind them. So, I drove home and as I was coming over the bridge from New Jersey into Pennsylvania, a gorgeous silvery white super moon had risen high into the sky and was shining its light down onto the dark waters of the Delaware River. 

The movement of light on the water was breathtaking.

The Delaware River is a dynamic body of water with fast-moving currents, and the light seemed to dance on the waters, highlighting the movement. It reminded me of moonlight shining on the ocean. I drove slowly across the bridge, savoring the beauty. I had driven to the shore to see the moonlight on the water and had to wait to come home before that beauty revealed itself.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

The featured photo is one I took on July 31, 2015, another time when I drove to the shore to watch the moon rise. . 

   

Taco Tuesday on Wednesday

I had a hankerin' for tacos this week. 

And what that usually means is that either I eat tacos pretty much every night or most of the very perishable corn tortillas I buy at Trader Joe's, which are clean and have no weird or undesirable ingredients, get wasted.

I hate waste. 

So, it's taco week for me. I started Monday with fish tacos made with Mahi Mahi and ate the leftover fish in slightly different tacos last night. Tonight it's roasted vegetable tacos, and I thought I might try making tacos with that wonderful pastured ground pork I get from the farmers market, and with shrimp and mango and avocado and corn. There are six servings in the package, so that's six nights of tacos.

It's an exercise in creativity.

And by the end, I might have a taco chapter for a cookbook.

How fun is that?

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

 

Compline

Before bed tonight, I give thanks for taking a day away.

To rest, to recuperate.

To not have anything I need to say.

But to show up anyway, for the writing.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

 

Solstice Musings

I never know what to do with the solstice when it falls after sunset.

The wheel of the year turned here at 11:32 p.m. last night. I'm never sure what to do with these observances on days like this. Since they're connected with the sun's movement and our perception of it, where the sun is (in our perception) matters. At least in my reckoning of it. But since the sun seems to be standing still for three days, I suppose that we can celebrate for those three days and not worry about precision. Except . . .

Except that the ancients were very precise about this stuff. They even built rockworks that would direct the sunlight as it falls on the earth on appointed days when there would be a seasonal shift. Of course, I don't have stewardship of Stonehenge or New Grange or any of the other rockworks designed to direct the light on the seasonal thresholds. 

I have only myself and stewardship of the ways I direct light as I move through life.

Still, I love the ancient observances that connect us with earth, sky, and space. I am part of all that and feel the connection deeply. The movements of earth, moon, planets reflect the movements of interior space as well. Energy, light and darkness and shadow, cycles and seasons and phases, pathways, descent and rising, turnings, stillness and movement, all are facets of the inner life as well as the outer world.

I remember that summertime was a time of happiness in childhood. There was no school, and the days stretched into forever. The heat broke on muggy afternoons with thunderstorms that moved through quickly. We'd be playing board games or jacks on the front porch, or we'd be lying on the glider feeling the motion as it went back and forth and listening to the rain. 

I remember that my mother took us on adventures where we would discover and explore new things. There might be a day camp for a few weeks, and swimming at the Sheraton. Running through the sprinkler in the yard. There were fireflies. And so many flowers. I remember ice cream cones at High's, the carousel at Glen Echo Park or down on the National Mall. The Good Humor Man and the familiar call of the bells on the ice cream truck. I remember picking black raspberries on the palisades above the Potomac River, picnics at Sugarloaf Mountain, finding crayfish amongst the rocks in the spring runoff pools at Berkeley Springs. 

Sometimes we'd take off for Bethany Beach or for points south for a beach vacation. There were crab feasts with corn on the cob, watermelon, and beer in cans for the grown ups. We'd put down newspaper on the table on the back porch and gather round it, laughing, talking, eating. Fireworks on the Fourth of July. Sparklers in the dark. The military bands played free concerts along the Potomac River.  Watching the planes take off from National Airport. Running around with other kids and having to be home before dark.

I think about the things I love to do now that bring me into a sense of happiness and freedom, and I notice that many of them are rooted in my childhood summertime patterns of exploration, play, and celebration. Sometimes happiness is following a treasure map with familiar markers that lead to new places.  

   

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Waiting For Godot and Old Bay Seasoning

I'm trying to remember how many times I read and studied the play in college.

I do remember that it was my most read and most studied bit of writing throughout those years. Samuel Beckett's enormously popular play that is about nothing and no one, is about the absurdity of waiting. Maybe. When asked about the play, Beckett always said he wrote down what he knew about it, so that if someone was looking for more from him, there was nothing more to share. 

It seems to me that more than anything it is a metaphor for the experience of life for many people, who wait and wait for something and then discover they've spent their whole life waiting for something that never comes. 

So it could be cautionary. Or it could simply be a mirror for the times in our existence when we are not busy and therefore are reflecting on life - the big picture.

I have no idea why Waiting for Godot came to mind today. I simply was thinking about church and the goings on there and the conversations that edge the worship space on Sunday mornings. And, of course, my preaching for the day. We encountered the story of Jesus and the disciples in the storm, and I've been thinking about how experiences like that are living parables, experiences that plant seeds in us that turn our worlds upside down. 

It's that turning the world upside down mindset that got me thinking about Waiting for Godot. I remember my love-hate relationship with the play in college. I also am thinking about how it, more than anything else I read in college (except maybe 1984), has stayed with me, somewhere at the edge of the back of my mind, all these years.

And Old Bay? A connection point. Someone in a group was talking about the phenomenon of eating blue crabs in Maryland and the nearly cultic attachment to Old Bay she observed. I popped up and reached into my pantry and pulled out my little yellow, blue, red, and white can. Not sure it's a cultic or slavish attachment, it's more iconic for those of us who know it. For those who don't, I'm not really sure what to say except, perhaps, how can you possibly have prepared (blue crabs and) steamed shrimp without it?

I'll wait.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

Opening to Experience

I went to a party today.

A couple of years ago, that might not have been a big deal. But today? 

I looked around the gathering, outdoors in a large space, and had a moment of awe and wonder. A party? A real party? It felt a little bit like a miracle, and there was such a lightness that came with it. One of my first thoughts after the awe and wonder and lightness was about safety. Is it safe? I don't know the answer to that, but we were outdoors and people were more distanced than they might once have been. And I ask myself again about changing patterns and whether this time of pandemic restriction has changed me. 

I'm home now and working on my Sunday sermon. The story is about Jesus and his disciples in a small boat in a storm. Jesus is relaxed and falls asleep. The disciples are freaking out in the storm. They wake him, cry out to him, scold him for abandoning them to the storm. 

Of course, he did not abandon them to the storm, but he does have a question about their faith there in the storm, and about why they shut down when they are afraid, instead of trusting the grace that is with them and opening to the experience.

It's a good question.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

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A Study in Abundance

When I've got nothing to say. 

But I've committed to write every day.

I've been here before. I think about my mentors in the craft. Keep your pen moving. Keep your pen moving. But I have no pen here today, just the keys tapping beneath my fingers. Keep the keys tapping. Keep the keys tapping. Keep them tapping until you slip back into the stream of words that flow from the whorls on your fingers.

Yesterday's trip into the Princeton farmers market left me with an abundance of fruit and the sudden realization that I will never be able to eat that much fruit while it's fresh. Everything except for raspberries was being sold in quarts rather than pints. There must be a thousand blueberries in a quart. I came home with strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. Today I've got two jars of strawberry-blueberry jam in the fridge. It's mystery jam because, even though I used two cups of strawberries and one cup of blueberries, cutting the recipe in half, I ended up with a jam that tastes, smells, and looks more like blueberry jam. I may need to make another tiny batch with just strawberries. That's really what I wanted. And the recipe promised that adding some blueberries would not darken the jam or diminish the strawberry flavor, but would simply deepen the flavor. It's okay. I've got a recipe for hand pies, and this jam will work perfectly with it. 

So now instead of too much fruit, I've got too much fruit, too much jam, and will soon have too many hand pies if I make them. Fruit must be the miracle food because it just keeps stretching and stretching with every attempt to use up the extra. A study in abundance. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Blinded By the Light

The sun is shining so brightly I have to close my eyes.

Makes it hard to move through the day. I hear the recycling truck going down the street again. They used to drive down the street once, picking up from both sides of the street. Now they drive down the street twice, picking up from one side at a time. I don't understand this change. The guys who pick up the trash have started to do the same thing. I don't understand that change either.

There's a lot of change I don't understand.

I was watching something on television last night and a character said, "Nothing changes that doesn't have to." I'm not sure that's true, but I'm still chewing on it. I can see that sometimes it's true. Or, it could just be that I don't understand the ins and outs of the "have to's of change" in every situation. 

It also could be cascades of consequences.

Back to sunny days. The farmers market where I shop is today. I'm smiling just thinking about it. For the last month or six weeks, I've either been out of town on Thursdays or the weather has been less than ideal for walking around an outdoor market, so today feels like a real treat. In the evening, I teach a mindfulness class by Zoom. I'm looking forward to the time we can be back in person for that. There was a change that had to happen, like so much of the changes during Covid. It seems I'm thinking about them again today, and about how my patterns have changed so much in just one year. 

And I wonder, have I changed too? 

Or is it just the patterns than have changed? Do our patterns change us as well, or just our behaviors? Is there a difference? 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Desire Wakes Up and Stretches

It seems I can sustain a new habit for exactly one day.

That's not really true, of course, and I'm chuckling as I write this, and think it. My experience yesterday morning must have been meant to give me a window into what is possible. My experience today reminds me I have to set up these changes well. 

I woke early this morning - 12:45 after turning off the light at ten last night. Then again sometime just before two or three, and another time at a time I can't remember. Finally, again at about six this morning. I need to remember to be more specific with my intentions. I want to get up early, but not so early or so often in a single night.

Fortunately, I'm still laughing. Sense of humor is everything. 

I'm also reminded that everything is not about producing. Or accomplishing. Today the outdoors beckon. Birdsong reminds me that I haven't been outside in awhile, probably since I came home from spending time with my daughter a few weeks ago, except of course to get the mail, to get in the car, or out of the car and into the house, for Sunday worship. 

A thought seeps in at the edge of my thinking. It's a great day to drive down to the beach.

The Jersey Shore is either an hour or an hour and a half drive, depending on which road I take, which shore town I want to visit. It's crazy that just that short drive can get me to the ocean. One of my life goals (that lives in the back of my mind, not the front of my mind) is to live near the ocean. Not sure how I made that happen, but there it is. Sometimes I wonder what might happen if that goal was in the front of my mind. 

Anyway, days like today remind me there are many choices in life. What do we do with our free days? How do we spend them? They're not like money that sits in an account, waiting for us. They're more like money that sits on a table and turns to dust if not spent before bedtime. 

It's a sobering thought and an exciting thought. 

How shall I spend a free afternoon today? Call my son and see if he's free? Pop into town and walk around the Rodin Museum's outdoor exhibition space? Drive down the shore and look at the ocean and maybe take a book and catch up on some pleasure reading? Put on my hiking shoes and walk into the woods? Call a friend and see if she's free for dinner? 

Putting the thoughts on paper, so to speak, gets them out of my head and before my eyes and back into my head differently. It's the beginning of manifestation since they're no longer just in my head and are out in the world in some way. 

It also gets me to think more expansively - I could also hop on a train and go into Manhattan for the first time since before the pandemic. I think the last time I may have been there was November or December 2019. I could drive northwest to the mountains and spend the day walking in the woods there. Or a two hour drive could get me to the Catskills. As I think about it, there are a lot of interesting places I can get to for a day trip or an easy overnight if I want to stretch out the fun and adventure. 

I feel like my mind is stretching after a long sleep, and it could be that that's what these pandemic restrictions have been - a long sleep for our desire. I continue to step carefully with my own practices, but it's time for me to start dreaming again, and to start stepping gently beyond restriction.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

Study in Stillness

I remember my ex telling me once about a woman he knew who got more done by ten in the morning than most people get done all day.

It's a story that's always stayed with me.

There's something alluring about the idea of getting done what really needs to be done by mid-morning and having the rest of the day to do other things. I imagine it being a life with less stress than the one I have created. And I imagine creating that kind of life, and how I might feel if I'm able to pull it off.

From a distance, something like this sounds impossible. But on a day like today I can see it. 

I woke up this morning at 4:45. The birds were singing more loudly than the air conditioner was humming. I actually felt somewhat rested, and I didn't have a headache. Morning headaches can rob me of hours as I try to manage them. I was up by 5:30 - I decided that I would not fall back to sleep and I remembered how much I like the quiet of the early morning. It reminds me a little of Wendell Berry's poem The Peace of Wild Things. Before human industry begins, the natural world is all there is. My kitchen has walls of windows and I often feel like I live in a treehouse here. It is all sky and sunrise and tree canopy and breeze moving everything this morning.

I finished up some dishes and had some lemon water, made tea and pulled out my morning journal. Did that writing and pulled out the new journal I began yesterday morning. Realized I'd forgotten the night writing and did that before heading into the morning prompts. Pulled out my laptop and began this writing. As I did that, I remembered this story. It's a 33 year-old-story, but somehow it's still with me. 

On my writing table in my library I have a 3 by 5 index card that says,

Schedule what's most important first. Always.

I think about this as I reflect on what fills my early morning time. What I think about when I think about what I'd like to get done by mid-morning. It's always the writing. Of course, I'd like also to get in some yoga and meditation, maybe a walk, especially in the summer when it can get hot and muggy here. Walks later in the day are not as enjoyable. Maybe also some focused de-cluttering or home organization time. 

Perhaps it's also the freedom to be still and notice things I'd otherwise miss. Like the pair of mourning doves high up on the weeping cherry in my neighbor's yard. I notice them as I take a minute to pause in the writing and look out the window. They are silhouetted against grey cloud. My cheek resting on my hand, my elbow resting on the table, I am still and not worried about a thing. The clouds break and there's blue sky. Light tips the puffy, white clouds that have transformed from grey. Soft, white early-morning light spreads as the clouds disperse. Farther off, birds fly across the skies. The doves remain, a study in stillness and in the peace of wild things.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

Kitchen Medicine

There's a pot of chicken broth on the stove.

The world always feels better to me when I close my eyes and breathe in the smell. Just hours from now, that beautiful and delicious golden liquid will be ready to drink. Or to use as a base for another kind of soup. It's kitchen medicine.

A funny thing happens when you start thinking every day about your own happiness. Cracks begin to appear where once there had been a thin veneer of satisfaction. You do some mental gymnastics to try to spackle the cracks and paint over them, but eventually they show up again and can't be ignored. 

Awareness, once invited, will not be denied.

I look around and see the places in my life where I have been throwing slipcovers over things. I notice the things that cause me weariness. I notice the places where I have been using self-talk to avoid taking action. Eventually a pile of things is going to fall over, no matter how well you've stacked them.

I'm three weeks in. There are two and half months to go. I'm going to have to start moving some pieces around or out. My travel schedule lately and the recycling teach me something through noticing.

Our borough sends the recycling trucks around once a week. Here, it's on Thursday. The last two Thursdays I've been traveling, short trips. The week before we had storms and heavy rainfall on Thursday. So, there's three weeks of kitchen recycling in Trader Joe's bags in my kitchen and the two boxes my new chairs came in near the front door. There's a large, clear plastic bag filled with paper shreds, and probably a few Trader Joe's bags filled with newspapers and old magazines and catalogues. 

That's a lot for a tiny apartment.

And, it's Monday. 

So here's what I'm going to do. I've gathered it all up to the front room. I'm going to go down and move my car from the carport to the driveway and I'm going to get it all downstairs and out the door, stack it neatly in a space that will stage it for going out easily on Wednesday night. And while I'm at it, I'm going to drive a chair I no longer use over to the Salvation Army and give it away - let it be a blessing for someone else. I could probably sell it, but that feels like a lot of work, and I just want to let things go while I have the energy and the will to do it. That will create space for other things, perhaps even just to see clearly and move more freely. 

I've made a list and I'm checking things off. Then I'm going to come home and sip that beautiful broth. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

And Today

Long days of work when you're tired to the bone.

Another time we have to pay special attention to happiness, because it's just too easy to gripe and complain.

I baptized three little kids today, 5, 20 months, 8 months. It was chaotic. But it was also beautiful. We're worshiping outside these days, under the trees in our outdoor cathedral. People bring recreational chairs or whatever chairs they have, and relax into the beautiful day. Some people put blankets on the ground, especially those with little kids. We speak uplifting and challenging words, offer prayers for those who are in need or who are struggling, offer financial gifts and food gifts to help make service possible and to feed those who are food insecure. Last week we sent 87 quilts overseas to areas in crisis. 

I noted in my sermon today that remembering things in threes helps us to remember. Today we talked about how experiencing welcome enables us to be welcoming, how receiving a word of life enables us to share such a word with others, and how a table prepared for us and being fed enables us prepare a table for others. Receiving the good things in life empowers us to share the good things in life.

There's a simple wisdom and beauty in this. 

The day has been cloudy and cooler. While I normally crave sunlight, on a day like today when full sun can raise the temperatures another ten degrees, I'm grateful for the clouds that soften the heat. I'm grateful for the quiet the street - no one has used power tools all afternoon. I'm grateful for the chance to snooze a bit in the afternoon. Sometimes I do that on Sundays when I've spent most of my energy by midday. There's a soft breeze blowing. The windows are closed, but I can see it moving the branches of trees outside my kitchen window.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

 

Days Like Today

It's the non-descript days you have to pay attention to.

It's easy to experience happiness on high days and at times when extraordinary things are planned. It's easy to find happiness on the days when things flow smoothly and things feel effortless. There are other days and spans of time when ease, flow, and happiness feel elusive.

I think about the days like today when I went to see my chiropractor, feeling all of my years in the body, when I got together on Zoom with a group of friends, and made a small peach tart. The water is on for tea. Not strong tea, mind you, but the leaves from this morning's cup, which hopefully won't keep me awake tonight. The sun is behind the clouds, or it might be hot in the house. It's damp. Comfortable with just the ceiling fans. I'll use the A.C. if I have to, but I don't really like the feel of it. 

It's evening, and things are quiet. I think I hear some birds still singing, but the windows are closed to keep out the damp, so the sound from outdoors is muted. There's swordfish waiting to be cooked, simply, and some nice ingredients for a green salad. It would be fun to have a cocktail, but if I have one too often I don't feel my best. I'd rather share one with a friend or my daughter or my son. The steeping tea waits. 

I'm looking forward to a long morning at work and to a long evening at it as well this evening. Bed will feel good. When did I start looking forward to my bed?

It's the little things on days like today. Things like the flowers I cut from my mother's garden yesterday before driving home. They sit on my dresser today, last night on my kitchen table as I wrote. 

It might be that on most days it's the little things that drive our happiness. And the consciousness, the awareness, around noticing enables us to tap in and to be nourished.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life..  

 

Hello, It's Me

 I live in the doughnut hole of the Brood-X emergence.

All around me are areas where the 17-year cicadas are singing, dancing, flying, mating. Not here. I'd been so looking forward to it and expected to be in the geographic area where they are emerging, but it's been a cicada drought here. I've read a few articles and it's true. They don't seem to like Philadelphia and the surrounding environs, except for a few lucky places.

I miss the songs.

Last week I drove down to Washington to spend a day and night with Mom before heading down to North Carolina to hang out with my daughter at the beach for a few days while she was there for a visit from Chicago. The air hangs heavy in the metropolitan area with the songs of cicadas, with their flight, with their dive bombing cars in motion. I'd been listening to Like A Hurricane, when I first heard them. The car window was open and my hair was blowing in the wind when Neil Young's melody mixed with the harmony of the cicadas.

I heard them again when I came back through town and again when I was down there over the last few days. I've really missed them here are home, where it usually feels so noisy but lately has seemed eerily silent.

Traffic was heavy today on I-95, rain pounding through much of Maryland, and as I approached the third traffic stall due to accidents, I turned to my right and discovered I was not alone in the car.

Hello, it's me.

A tiny cicada was walking on my red cooler. It walked over to the back of the front passenger seat, and did a circuit on the handles of my purse, on the zipper, dipping inside and out again. That cicada rode all the way home with me, sounding like a fire alarm only once when I attempted to move it back to a comfortable distance from where I was sitting, and driving, hoping to forestall any flights into my hair. 

But the cicada seemed perfectly happy just hanging out and walking around.

I think it may have hitched a ride with me on the flowers I cut from my mother's garden before I left. They've been flying in and out of the hydrangea bushes, in and out of the trees, in and out of the trumpet flower vines, in and out of just about anything green in my mother's garden. 

Come to think of it, I'm not sure I remember seeing them around here last time either. 

The time before that I spent the summer in Brooklyn for an internship, and I don't remember seeing them there either.

But 1970? I remember that year well. They were thick in Washington, where I grew up. And I was little. It was a wonder to me. Truth be told, it still is.

My driving companion took off shortly after we arrived here. I wonder what adventures it will find and whether it stayed. I'm close to the river and New Jersey, so maybe it flew across the river in search of others to sing with. Or hitched a ride with someone driving across the bridge. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and every year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

A Good Kind of Tired

I drove down to my mom's yesterday to make a meal. 

One of those old family recipes that's a lot of work to do well, but is so worth it. 

I went shopping yesterday for ingredients and spent the day today cooking after an early morning Zoom meeting for work. I cut flowers from my mother's garden. Mom and I set a beautiful table, chilled a nice bottle of wine, and waited for my uncle and cousin to arrive. The four of us sat around the table, enjoying conversation and good food.

My cousin is also a good friend. We've hiked the desert together and have sat on a bluff far above the Pacific Ocean at a beautiful spa, watching the movement of ocean, sky, and clouds. This is the first time we've seen each other since before Covid began, so another reunion this week like the one I had with my daughter last week. 

She moved to California six years ago, and the distance has made us more intentional about seeing each other and planning adventures. Getting together today got us thinking about more adventures.

I'm not quite ready to start flying around yet. I'm thinking about the next wave of variant-related Covid spikes and the resulting effects on life that seem inevitable with low vaccination rates and exuberant efforts to return to normal. I continue to step carefully through the changing landscape.

And now, I'm relaxing after a day well spent before having to drive home again tomorrow. I'm so tired I could cry, but it's a good kind of tired and they'd be happy tears.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and every year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

     

 

Threading the Needle

Water hangs thick in the air.

Sunshine, pale blue skies with streaks of white cloud, a canopy of green leaves on trees outside my kitchen windows. Sometimes I feel like I live in a tree house. 

The street is quiet again this morning. 

I'm taking a few moments of quiet reflection before my day begins in earnest. I head out of town again today for a few days away with family and head back again to pick up life here. I feel like thread being pulled through fabric. Or maybe I am the needle. Maybe I am the needle, the thread, and the fabric, as well as the hand who holds it all.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of  the small things in life.

Softly, the Rain Falls

The heat has been searing and the humidity stifling.

But this afternoon the skies cracked open with the sounding of thunder, and the pressure broke. The temperature dropped 15 degrees and rain began to fall, softly. It is the gentlest thunderstorm I've experienced in years. Reminds me of childhood summers, playing on the front porch in the middle of the afternoon when summer storms moved through and sprinkled the lawn with rainfall, while thunder sounded far away. I loved to step off the porch and run barefoot through the rain, spin around with my arms open wide and look up into the sky. 

Today I carried groceries in from the car, opened the kitchen window, and made iced tea with lemon. The ice melted in the glass. Most people would have turned on the air conditioning. 

But I love the smell of the rain, and the sound of it falling outside my kitchen window. The lush greenness all around. And the sound of birds singing through the storm.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. 

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and every year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Pink-Blossomed Succulents and Blueberry Crisp Cookies

I can think of nothing more wonderful than pink blossoms on succulents. Deep, bright, vibrant star-shaped flowers with layers of petals. Tiny and profuse. Tucked deep in a small succulent garden given to me by a friend. It's one of the best gifts I've been given recently. I enjoy my friend's magical garden behind and surrounding the house she grew up in and lives in once again, and I miss having one myself since letting go of my house during the divorce. Strangely, I've been gifted two gardens filled with desert plants in the last few months.

I've become a different kind of gardener. 

It's funny how the gifts we receive can begin to define us if we let them. 

I've just let that hang for a minute on the screen in front of me. It's an interesting thought. Allowing ourselves to be defined by the gifts we receive - I wonder if there is a crazy kind of wisdom there. In the mix are gratitude, belovedness, and the kind of effort that considers many things. When we offer a gift, we think about the person to whom the gift is being given, we offer it with love and with gratitude for their presence in our lives. We want to show them they are beloved. That we value them. That we want them to be surrounded by beautiful things. There is probably so much more to this, but for now, I'm simply enjoying the original thought.

It's funny how the gifts we receive can begin to define us if we let them.

I left my last congregation three months ago. We were still in the more restrictive part of the pandemic gathering guidelines, so the usual celebrations were not able to happen. Instead, we had a "drive in" farewell. About 20 people came and went, the right people. Most brought gifts. I had a bag full of cards with beautiful notes of thanks and a pile of beautifully wrapped gifts. Thoughtful expressions from people who came to know me for a time and who appreciated what I brought during our brief time together. Three years - longer than most because of the pandemic, which added a year. 

There was Mother's Day, and a wonderful day and meal out with my son at a French restaurant in a city that was just beginning to open up again. Time, conversation, a meal shared.

The kitschy, dollar store, cactus-handled glasses from my daughter to celebrate our first time together since Christmas 2019, the last time we saw each other before the pandemic. They'll always remind me of that time we spent together - three whole days of each other's undivided attention.

Some beautiful heirlooms my mother sent home with me the other day.

Words from people in the church where I now preach about grace within the sermon I offered that transformed sadness and other hard feelings within. Movements of the human heart. 

So often when we think about the things that define us, we think about our job, our marital status, our address, our net worth, and other items we complete when we're filling out forms. We think about our successes and failures. We think too much about the things we've messed up and less about the things we've done well or the things we've created or the people who love us. 

I like to think about myself as a gardener of desert plants, as a lovely and witty meal companion, a fun travel partner, beloved daughter, mover of human hearts. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and every year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

 

Why Can't the Dishes Do Themselves?

I think it to myself, and may even have said it out loud, as I sat down to write tonight. 

The sink was full of them, and I bemoaned having to do them at 10:15 pm when I'd rather be in bed asleep. But the internet was slow loading, so I got up and washed them quickly instead of sitting in front of the screen becoming frustrated. Lately, it feels like the '90s every time I sign in and try to get online. I wonder if Comcast has gone back to dial-up. The only good thing about it today was getting the dishes done quickly while I waited. Now I'm contending with screen freezes, another flashback to personal computing in the '90s.

There were a lot of things I loved about the '90s. Anything related to my PC is not one of them.

It's been another great day - beautiful weather (but too hot), a good day of work, the time to be able to take care of myself with a headache that wanted a nap. I'm not a good napper, but I gave in to it right away and am glad I did. A few hours after I got up, my headache disappeared. I popped over to the grocery store to get some ingredients for a recipe I wanted to try, did some cooking, and enjoyed a fabulous meal. Now I'm ready for bed again. I'm also ready for another good week. I've been grateful for this daily writing practice that enables me to re-focus my awareness around happiness, gratitude, and self-compassion.

I found a place for my new dollar store cocktail glasses, a fun and kitschy gift from my daughter for our mini-vacation last week. They fit in beautifully with my great grand-mother's depression glassware, my Czech and Slovak ceramics, and all the other treasures in my china cabinet. 

A Hundred Day's of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. 

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and every year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life..

   

Home Again

As brilliant as travel is, there is something wonderful about coming home.

Another long day, another long drive, another time of carrying items from the car and up the stairs and unpacking and putting away and reading emails and responding to those that cannot wait and having something to eat and drink and hoping for a shower and writing and getting ready for work tomorrow. It all sounds like stream of consciousness.

Actually, it is the simple ritual of return and settling back into the patterns of home.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Falling Exhausted Into Bed After Two Days that Feel Like Ten

They felt like they never would end.

But they did, and I'm back at my mother's thinking big thoughts in small moments. My daughter and I packed another full day into half of this day before we said good-bye and I headed back north. I had a six-and-a-half-hour drive to reflect on our beautiful time together as I passed from storm to storm and into the space between storms. The day was beautiful, and when the storms ended the sky stretched into as much forever as the water had earlier in the day.

I am in between again. Passing from threshold to threshold, and the space between thresholds. Is that space yet another threshold? They come like the sideways rain in today's storms. And as I sit on the bed, still and reflective, everything begins move - like the motion of the car or the feel of the water beneath the ferry. 

And I wonder if part of me is still there.   

 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and every year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life..