Greetings!   I am two days into a meditation challenge for the month of February.   It's an online thing with Sharon Salzburg who is a legendary leader in the Western mindfulness meditation movement.  I am "committing to sit" with her meditations once a day for the entire month.  

What am I learning here?  Well, my mind wanders a lot, but that's OK.  I just keep coming back.  The image/metaphor/idea of letting my attention rest like a butterfly on a flower is a resonant one.  I tend to -try hard- all of the time.  If I'm meditating, I'm trying to do it better or more intensely or more focused.   But, a butterfly doesn't try to land more lightly.  It just wafts down, flies off, wafts down again.   It is amazing to me how much calmer and more centered I feel after only 8 minutes of meditation.   It does feel like I am coming home to myself.   She mentioned the fragmentation that we all feel almost all the time.   It's like the meditation practice helps us to mold the broken fragments back into wholeness, like a potter at a wheel adding a bit of clay and smoothing it into the pattern.

I realize that meditation will not always be easy or feel successful.   Some days it will be a struggle to focus on the breathing and let the thoughts arise without judgment.  I am GOOD at judgment, especially when it comes to myself.  But, one of my hopes is that I'll allow this deepening practice to serve me in moments of stress and distraction and crisis.   Eventually.   I am definitely not there yet.  But, I am committing to sit.

Work concerns have disappointingly intruded on my sabbatical time in the past week.   But, here's an opportunity for me to sit with that disappointment and not try to run or hide from it.  I am here.  These things are happening around me, but I am always here.  There is space.

Things I am grateful for this week:

*The glow of the street light that provides a warm, safe boundary for my puppy and me as we venture outside for quick late-night jaunts before bedtime.
*Second chances.
*The way the sunset hit the snow-capped mountains covering them in soft pink light this evening.
*Clarity about at least one professional decision.
*My son coming into the kitchen as I was washing dishes and just leaning his body against mine for a moment because he could tell I was preoccupied with something negative and wanted to give me comfort.

Thanks for reading!