If we were having coffee: After Thanksgiving edition

Wednesday’s sunrise lights in the meadow.

If you have found your truth within yourself there is nothing more in this whole existence to find. Truth is functioning through you. When you open your eyes, it is truth opening his eyes. When you close your eyes, it is truth who is closing its eyes.

This is a tremendous meditation. If you can simply understand the device, you don’t have to do anything; whatever you are doing is being done by truth. You are walking, it is truth; you are sleeping, it is truth resting; you are speaking, it is truth speaking; you are silent, it is truth that is silent.

This is one of the most simple meditation techniques. Slowly, slowly everything settles by this simple formula, and then there is no need for the technique.

When you are cured, you throw away the meditation, you throw away the medicine. Then you live as truth–alive, radiant, contented, blissful, a song unto yourself. Your whole life becomes a prayer without any words, or better to say a prayerfulness, a grace, a beauty which does not belong to our mundane world, a ray of light coming from the beyond into the darkness of our world.

Osho, The Great Zen Master Ta Hui, Chapter 23

Holiday decorations are going up in the meadows.

If we were having coffee or tea or some other beverage, I would be delighted to see you again.  Hugs if you’re amenable to them.  Come on in, and please pardon the mess.  We’re still working on the living room/great room, and M and I just returned from a quick trip to New Jersey for a Thanksgiving visit with some of my clan.  Let’s go sit on the back porch (three-season room) so we can get away from all the noise M is making as he installs the last of the flooring.  Outside, it is cloudy with sunny spells today, but warm enough that we should be comfortable out there.  From the looks of things, it might even clear up enough to become mostly sunny with cloudy spells.  I’m seeing a lot of blue sky overhead.

Wednesday’s moon rise.

How are you?  What have you been up to this past week?  Did you celebrate Thanksgiving?  If so, on your own or with family and/or friends?  If you did celebrate Thanksgiving, did you eat too much or did you eat just the right amount?  Did you travel anywhere?  See any new sights?  Have you gone on any walks or hikes?  Have you seen any sunrises, sunsets, moon rises, or moon sets?  Have you read any good books or seen any good films since our last chat?

One of the bridges over the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal.  St. Georges, Delaware.  (Friday, near sunset.)

I finally finished reading Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear and, as I told you last week, I loved it.  I’ll probably hold on to it for a while rather than donate it.  It will be good to dip into now and then when I need a pep talk that includes a lot of common sense.  I’m still reading Moonheart, and will probably finish it in the next week or so.  In addition, I started Nothing to Grasp which is described as “a celebration of what is, exactly as it is.”

Looking the other way.

If you pay attention to the sidebar here at Ye Olde Blogge, you may have noticed that I am often reading two or three books at one time and that there is a pattern of sorts that includes a recent work of fiction, some sort of non-fiction, and a classic (could be fiction or non-fiction).  I am finally using an e-reader (with the Kindle app on my Android tablet), and will likely be reading the classics on that.  Otherwise, I much prefer the feel of a real book in my hands (it’s more comfortable to hold, for one thing).  My eyes seem to prefer it as well.  I also noticed that I am more likely to feel a little car sick if I use the tablet rather than read a real book while we’re on the road.  I was hoping the tablet would allow more reading during our travels after dark.  Maybe I’ll adjust to it eventually.  I can read little bits at a time.  I just have to look up and out the window more frequently than when I have a traditional book in my hands.

Route markers and shadows.  Walking the paved trail that runs along the C&D Canal.

If we were having coffee or tea or some other beverage, I would tell you that I did something this week that I rarely do.  It was something so shocking that those who know me couldn’t believe it.  Are you ready for this?…  I baked cookies.  Honestly.  I did.  I made M&M cookies (chocolate chip cookies with M&M’s instead of chocolate chips).  It probably won’t happen again for another ten or twenty years unless someone comes along and requests them.  I’ll run back to the kitchen and get them so you can have one or two or three or as many as you like.  After today, I’m going sugar-free again so it would be good to get the cookies out of here by some means or another.  They are really buttery and chewy and tasty, and hard to resist.

I baked cookies because life is too short not to indulge a craving or a whim every now and then.  If you are wondering why it was such a shocking thing to do, well, I don’t really like to bake.  I love to cook.  But baking?  Not so much.  You have to follow the rules when you bake whereas cooking leaves lots of room for improvising, or at least it feels that way to me.  That said, every now and then I do get the urge to bake something.  Usually it’s bread, but this week it happened to be cookies.

Using the canal.

If we were having coffee or some other beverage, I would tell you that I had a lovely Thanksgiving visit with my father, my siblings, their spouses, my nieces, and one of my nephews.  The food was great, the company was wonderful, and there was the usual fun banter and laughter.  We’re all a bunch of nuts, I think.  A little crazy, but in a good way.

Watching the sunset on our way back to the car.

If we were having coffee or some other beverage, I would tell you that it was a quick trip.  We left here Thursday morning and came back Friday evening.  M and I have traveled over Thanksgiving in the past, and have learned not to travel on the Wednesday before or the Sunday after.  The roads are crowded on those days, and accidents seem more likely to happen (especially on the Pennsylvania turnpike which, thank goodness, we didn’t have to use for this trip).

Two bridges over the canal.

M and I stopped on the way home to take a little walk on the trail that runs along part of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal.  We needed to stretch our legs and move our bodies a bit after all the sitting in the car and while visiting family.  We rode our bikes on this trail sometime in October of 2014 so we knew it would be a good place for a quick (30 minute) walk.  We arrived in time to watch the sunset as we walked back to the car.

The toll bridge.

If we were having coffee or some other beverage, I would tell you that I’m still waking early in the morning and enjoying the sunrises.  Did you see this morning’s sunrise?  It was rich and red and beautiful.  Sailor’s lore says a red sunrise means rain, and we do have rain in our forecast either tonight or tomorrow.  It’s associated with a cold front, but our temperatures won’t be dipping too much.  We’ll still be in the upper 50’s or low 60’s.  Thanksgiving Day was incredibly mild and would have been a good day to spend outdoors if we’d had the time to do so.  Yesterday was wonderful, too.  It hardly feels like the end of November.  Perhaps those woolly bears were right, but it’s too soon to tell.  We haven’t even officially entered winter yet.

Looking out over the meadow at sunrise this morning.

If we were having coffee or some other beverage, I would tell you that I won’t be “winning” NaNoWriMo this year, but I am so glad I decided to take the leap into it.  I have a good start on my novel, and I will continue to write and work on it.

Amazing sky.

If we were having coffee or some other beverage, I would imagine I have gabbed enough and it’s time to turn the conversation over to you.  Or it might be time for you to go since I know there are other people to visit.  Thank you so much for joining me on the porch for coffee, cookies, and a good chat.

View from the dock at sunrise this morning.

Be good, be kind, be loving, be well.  Just Be.  🙂

Magical editing. (Processed in Pixlr.)

This post is in response to Part Time Monster’s #WeekendCoffeeShare.  Put the kettle on, start the coffee maker, open a bottle of wine, or whatever your preference is, and join us.  I’d love to hear all about what you were up to this week.

Please take some cookies with you when you leave. Thank you!