Love Feast

November really marks the start of the "food" holidays for me. They have taken on a new dimension since the pandemic forced everyone to spend more time on their own. In our case, it meant we stayed away from others together. If one of us stayed focused and careful it was bound to keep the other one safe. Since we both, just due to age, are in the high-risk category, we maintained a very high regard for staying out of crowded situations and always washing up and wearing a mask. We didn't get shitty with others who felt different. We just stepped away and relied on our own good judgement. Oh, and we stopped watching numbers. If you stay careful, they just don't seem to carry the impact that the fear mongers and those paid to make a tragedy into a headline thrive on. But I digress. My amazing wife decided to use the time we had to stay away from each other to get healthier. She began a walking program that shamed me into getting off my ass and walking as best I could. The sum total for me anyway is I am now 48 pounds lighter and I have dropped two clothing sizes. Now the trimer me has caused some people to worry but I can assure you that right along with the new exercise program came the Love Feast. What is the Love Feast? It is food prepared with the idea of trying to incorporate only useable calories in a healthy and tasty way. I started getting some amazing food which in turn made me look for amazing food and all of it designed to deal with my prediabetic state and the taste of the product. We can all afford to eat less meat and yes, a tasteless chicken breast is meat. But something else entered the picture. I began to love the food that I was being handed. This stuff isn’t quick. The wild blueberry chia Pudding on the top has to sit in the fridge overnight to get all lovely. The wholewheat blueberry lavender scones take a bit of tender love to make. You don't just twist the package and plop them on the foil. The vegetarian chili on the last page made with sweet potatoes of all things to give it texture was incredibly tasty but it didn't come together in ten minutes. Now lest you think that I was just the recipient, when you eat these love feasts, you have a tendency to start looking around to make your own. You begin to hang out on webpages and watch videos that include natural ingredients combined with technique from the masters. You put on that music you have been wanting time to listen to and yes, you may even find yourself dancing in the kitchen. There was a whole lot of dancing at the love feast. Food made for you as an expression of love and respect rather than as an obligation is an amazing substance. It's like sex. Slow it down to enjoy it longer. Now come the holidays that are really focused on the "together" part. Thanksgiving and Christmas may mean different things to different people but almost everyone associates them with FOOD and FOOD SHARED. I have already heard people talk about how they are going to try to handle the "holiday parties" when each could be the source of personal tragedy. Depending on the progress of the disease as offset by the progress toward a vaccine, we will be skipping most of the holiday parties although, admittedly we get fewer invitations than we used to. We will explain as best we can that we are still committed to being here Christmas 2021 and thus if the crowd is piled into a space that is too crowded or we suspect that too many of our mask-less friends will be there, we will be politely declining. We will find ways to visit with the family that we can. If they are otherwise engaged, we will find an exciting new place to be to cook a love feast for each other to celebrate the fact that we are still here. Some of our favorites aren't and we will lift a glass to them and hope they will realize we would have loved to serve them.

It took me awhile to figure out my approach to peace. I mistakenly felt that it was just a lack of noise, activity, or aggravation. While it took me almost 70 years to figure it out, I realize that I was discovering it all along but just didn’t recognize it. Medication helped particularly with the concentration. But what worked most effectively was just stopping and taking in what was gong on around me without judgment. I still crave stimulation. I still spend time experimenting with new settings and testing my somewhat diminishing ability to cope with whatever situation I put myself in. But there is no question that I let peace find me now. I do make decisions like the one to take a break from the high level of activity in my urban home. I’ve often said that I feel comfortable in two places; deep in the city or deep in the woods. I find peace in both but I look in both now on a regular basis. It’s the in-between part, the suburbs or the vastness of farmland that I find tough to negotiate. I do it, but I have to really work hard to find peace. We are in a cabin now at the end of a small gravel road on the side of a foothill near Townsend, TN. Right at the backdoor of the Smoky Mountains National Park. Last night we had a visit from a black bear and her yearling. She does know how to open a bear proof trash can but fortunately it was empty. She saw us an true to nature moved off and in about five minutes her cub showed off and didn’t even stop to inspect her handiwork. The cub did look back to see the strange creatures smiling back. No fear, no loud noises, just letting it be. Today we will be joined by an extremely close friend for two days of fly fishing. We will put back everything we manage to catch. I will spend most of my time just watching the river. It’s the act of fishing that I enjoy the most not the number of fish caught. I like the sound of the river. No fear, no loud noises, just letting it be. It’s a good definition for peace.

Rivers Sounds are the sounds of Peace

For a guy that can't hear, my head is constantly full of sound. I hear the voices of my characters. I hear the background music. Almost every morning, I hear the muse dictating the next episode in this on-going saga that all true story tellers possess. I also hear peace. Yes, it has a sound. Most people associate the concept of peace with silence. Silence that is experienced by looking inward mimics sounds that put me at peace. Rivers do that for me. All rivers have sound whether they're trickling over rocks on their way to the sea from their upstream origins or roaring beyond their banks at flood stage. If you are aware and take the time, you can always hear them before you see them. For me they are the voice of peace. I've heard them in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee just as clearly as I hear the voice of the Hillsborough River flowing through urban Tampa. I have heard the voice of peace on Beaufort Bay and all the way across the country on the Hoh River on the Olympic Peninsula. I'm never quite sure if my love of flyfishing came before or after I discovered my love of the sound of a river. The fact that trout, steelhead, and salmon happen to live in most of my favorites is an added benefit. It is always easier to say to my friends that I am going fishing than it is to reveal that I'm really going to listen to the river while I fish. Rivers are special places. They make their own way and create their own positive energy. Tap that energy by listening. When you're on the river, take out the earbuds, remove the headphones, for Christ's sake stop talking all the time, and listen. You will hear the muse, the angels of creativity calling to you. They are singing a song of peace.

Music for Focus

All of us have that special something that soothes the savage within us. Mine is sound and even more specifically music. It has been a part of my life since my earliest memories. I began music training at the age of six. I could not reach the pedals of the upright Gulbransen Piano that always occupied a significant space in the family apartment. Let's not forget the giant Hammond C3 Organ that sat across the small living room. Add the Grundig Majestic Stereo Console that took up the rest of the space and that was the room you entered. To really get the feel, the entire apartment was only a 950 square foot two-bedroom one bath. Cozy is a good word. The stereo was my fathers and looked like a giant coffin. It was his pride and joy with a nine-band radio receiver, a turntable, and a reel to reel tape player that never got used. The good news was that it was always on. I can't remember a time that my house didn't have music. It has been a continuous theme. Music comes in different forms. I am an avid walker now with the Covid 19 restrictions. I have found that I cannot walk comfortably without my music. Since I average around 3.5 miles per day in an urban parking garage, the tunes frame my world. I may only be seven stories up but with Lyly Lovett, Kacey Musgraves, Dr. John, LeAnne Rimes, Billy Strings, Eric Clapton, and J.J. Cale I am never alone, always upbeat and making headway. It is not by chance that when I meditate, and I do so twice a day thank you Calm, there is the sound of moving water in the background. My favorite outdoor pursuit is fresh water fly fishing always with the sound of moving water. When I hike, I look for trails near water. By chance in 2001, during the 911 crisis, we were in a cabin near Lake Crescent on the Olympic Peninsula. With the world adjusting to a new setting, we had the sound of water all around us. It was the music that gave us what little peace there was to be had during that time. Peace to me is sound and all of it is music. It's just the way I'm wired and that is the peace discovery I found during the most recent forced reset of how we live and interact. Find your music, find your peace. It may not be music but it won't be chaos.

Messages from Others

I've hiked a good. number of beaches in my time. I've always found the sound of the sea and call of the gulls comforting. I've also always been lucky to find some sign that someone else felt the same way. I can't think of a time when I didn't find such a cairn left by another person as a message of peace and tranquility. I not a beachcomber or a shell collector. I'm a find a spot and sit kind of naturalist. I always have been. So, the balanced rocks are as special for me as finding a shark's tooth or a conch shell is for others. So, what do I do when I find one? I sit my ass down and think. When I was younger and could do that easily, people might even suggest that I was doing yoga and these cairns can certainly be found in yoga literature. But I am not that sophisticated. I am just fascinated by the time and effort and concentration that had to go into piling each piece of the cairn in a way that balance was maintained. I often imagine what the person sitting there and choosing each rock and experimenting. I can almost feel the focus required to defy gravity to create something that whispers "peace" to me. I've found them on beaches on the west coast, all up and down the east coast, and even on islands like the one above on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine. I found them along the Sarapiqui and Pacuare Rivers in Costa Rica, on a gravel bed of the Davidson River in North Carolina and almost anywhere moving water could create a stone that could be balanced. But the story didn't end there. I began to find them inland as well from the Hoh Rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula to a trail along the interior of Pine Island, Florida. I almost fell of one on Mount Batttie in the Camden Hills State Park and sat in the presence of a small one along the Appalachian Trail near Shenandoah. I don't think it's the geography. I think it is the nature of bringing a peaceful message from one human to another whatever the symbolism. I know I can find someone to argue that with me if I wasted time arguing. But, it doesn't matter to me if I'm totally wrong because taking a moment to look at the result of another human's labor brings me peace, focus, and tranquility. Next time you're out anywhere. Look for cairn. Then think about what it means and what the person who created it was thinking. It's a peaceful exercise.

Knowing Who You Are

I spent the first third of my life sorting out me versus other people. I thought it was easy. But somehow, I never quite figured out other people in time to save many relationships. It was a time when our culture was discovering new things and new lifestyles both good and not so good. It even got a name the "me" generation. Even then I didn't get it. I always saw myself as a reflection of others. I was always comparing and contrasting. I drew energy from that "me" stuff without really understanding what "me" meant. I never took a moment to reflect inwardly about who I really was. I was so busy being me that I didn't stop and discover who I was dealing with in my own skin.

That requires a complete shift of focus. You have to take time to look inwardly and ask some tough questions about your language, your behavior, your emotions, and your vulnerabilities. Whether you call them idiosyncrasies, quirks, personality traits, or just "that's me", you have to take some time to figure out what all those observations mean in defining who you are. That takes concentration, mindfulness usually bolstered by meditation, and a ton on non-judgement. You have to work to become at peace with yourself. Until you do, you can't possibly see yourself clearly particularly if you only see who you are as a reflection of the words, actions, and emotions of others. You have to be at peace with yourself to be ablt to define where you stops and other starts.

Mindful Matters

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What we may believe:

"Staying calm is exhausting."

"Thinking before you speak is energy depleting."

"Giving a damn about what people will think or how they'll react can bring you to your knees." "Being responsible is just difficult. Being afraid and angry must be better. After all, they're easier."

"Whoever said the facts make for better decisions? It's much easier just to make the facts conform to what you want and then insist on getting your way."

The Truth

Taking time to concentrate on your breath and push all other thoughts out of your mind even if it is just for five minutes, gets easier the more you do it. Thinking before you speak isn't something done to win an argument. It is something you do to avoid a conflict in the first place and takes no more energy. The truth about all of us is that we do give a damn about what people think. Modern advertising would disappear if that weren't true. Thinking about how people will react takes less time than dreaming up a response for why they reject you. The facts are often debatable just like the truth can be seen from different viewpoints. But fantasy is just fantasy. Taking time to bring yourself back to neutral will center you back on using that power of your brain to respond rather than react, to heal rather than hurt, an build rather than destroy.