Doing Something New

Winter is a desert.  It is quiet and arid.  Human events are magnified against the still, dormant backdrop of bare branches and snowy hills.  I think this is what is meant by “cabin fever”–that phenomenon when daily doings suddenly take on much more weight than they were ever made to hold.  We get restless and cranky and start to pick at each other.

My own little problems:  a dog with a terrible wound (caused by vet error and truly grieving me); a cancelled trip to the Philadelphia Garden Show (which was to be my antidote for Winter Woes); general lethargy and fatigue (read:  I’m sick of trips to the woodpile).  It’s February and I expected no less.  I know the darkness before the dawn.  And I am comforted, even brightened, by a Bible verse I heard as though for the first time:  “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new!  Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  In the desert I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers.” (Isaiah 43:  18-19, 21-22)

I like to keep most of my deepest beliefs private.  This one, though, I’ll put out on a cushion in a case–it’s the Hope Diamond of who I am:  God is in the business of creation.  No matter whatever else happens, there is always the promise of renewal.  Created in God’s image, we are also creators.  I’m bogged down right now.  I need to remember not the events of the past.  Time for doing something new.

In Only Twenty Minutes

When I was twenty, I was a full-time Deaconess Hospital nursing student, a part-time University of Minnesota humanities student (preparing for a lucrative Liberal Arts career if nursing didn’t work out…), and had a weekend job. Somehow I managed to take all those classes, do all that reading and writing, work, eat, play the piano, and occasionally do laundry and take showers. How on earth. I probably had about twenty minutes of “down time” per day. I thrived on the fast pace.

Now? My most mundane activities have to be broken into twenty-minute chunks. Get dressed. Brush teeth. Eat breakfast. Etc. I move very slowly and have to think about every tiny maneuver. I know part of this phenomenon is related to being in pain and part of it is what they call “the aging process.” I wish I could summon some of that bright, elastic, generative energy of years gone by. For now, I have my little chunks.

Fortunately (or oddly, depending on how you look at it) the world currently seems to operate on the “twenty minutes per day” principle.  Want beautiful, younger-looking skin?  There’s a twenty-minute protocol for it.  You can learn Italian in twenty minutes per day.  Or improve your golf swing.  Or have better thighs.  You can prepare a delicious dinner, write a novel, create custom jewelry, and become a professional tap dancer if you will only commit those twenty minutes every day.

My own Twenty Minute Menu is not very ambitious, I’m afraid.  My day starts with the twenty minutes it takes from having the thought to actually getting out of bed and goes from there.  However, I have found a few twenty-minute schemes that really do make a different.  One is my yoga routine.  Rodney Yee only asks for twenty minutes and delivers my continued mobility http://www.gaiam.com/product/rodney+yee%27s+daily+yoga+dvd.do.  Another is a daily meditation from Irish priests who keep my spiritual tank topped off http://www.sacredspace.ie/prayer-advice.

The most revolutionary twenty minutes I’ve added to my recent days is my new housework scheme.  Anyone who knows me understands that twenty minutes of cleaning per day in my house is literally shoveling sand  against the tide.  But wait!  This really works!  Rather than trying to clean the whole damn house all of a day, I now just chip away in little twenty-minute spurts and things are getting cleaner.  Here’s the formula:http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/the-schedule-house-cleaning-in-131142.

Which leaves me with just enough time for this blog, but now my twenty minutes are up.  Gotta go.

Forty Days

Today is Ash Wednesday. Just when the winter seems most endless we come against this season of reflection and lonliness. Forty days in the desert. I’m not sure why this dry desperation is so important in the cycle of life, but it is. This year feels a little juicier to me than most, so I’m coming to Lent quiet and curious. We’ll see what happens.