some zen for your day

I read this post below and it reminded me of many of our zen discussions through the years. 

May this be a simple reminder for you all to be present, wherever you are as you are reading this 

and whatever is ahead of you for the rest of your day... 

As I read these, I realize I am such a beginner in all of this stuff... 

(spoken from the multi-tasking queen) 

Whatever the tasks, do them slowly

with ease,

in mindfulness,

so not do any tasks with the goal

of getting them over with.

Resolve to each job in a relaxed way,

with all your attention.

– Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master

In our daily lives, we often rush through tasks, trying to get them done, trying to finish as much as we can each day, speeding along in our cars to our next destination, rushing to do what we need to do there, and then leaving so that we can speed to our next destination.

Unfortunately, it’s often not until we get to our final destination that we realize what madness this all is.

At the end of the day, we’re often exhausted and stressed out from the grind and the chaos and the busy-ness of the day. We don’t have time for what’s important to us, for what we really want to be doing, for spending time with loved ones, for doing things we’re passionate about.

And yet, it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s possible to live a simpler life, one where you enjoy each activity, where you are present in everything (or most things) you do, where you are content rather than rushing to finish things.

If that appeals to you, let’s take a look at some suggestions for living a simple, peaceful, content life:

1. What’s important. First, take a step back and think about what’s important to you. What do you really want to be doing, who do you want to spend your time with, what do you want to accomplish with your work? Make a short list of 4-5 things for your life, 4-5 people you want to spend time with, 4-5 things you’d like to accomplish at work
2. Examine your commitments. A big part of the problem is that our lives are way too full. We can’t possibly do everything we have committed to doing, and we certainly can’t enjoy it if we’re trying to do everything. Accept that you can’t do everything, know that you want to do what’s important to you, and try to eliminate the commitments that aren’t as important.
3. Do less each day. Don’t fill your day up with things to do. You will end up rushing to do them all. If you normally try (and fail) to do 7-10 things, do 3 important ones instead (with 3 more smaller items to do if you get those three done). This will give you time to do what you need to do, and not rush.
4. Leave space between tasks or appointments. Another mistake is trying to schedule things back-to-back. This leaves no cushion in case things take longer than we planned (which they always do), and it also gives us a feeling of being rushed and stressed throughout the day. Instead, leave a good-sized gap between your appointments or tasks, allowing you to focus more on each one, and have a transition time between them.
5. Eliminate as much as possible from your to-do list. You can’t do everything on your to-do list. Even if you could, more things will come up. As much as you can, simplify your to-do list down to the essentials. This allows you to rush less and focus more on what’s important.
6. Now, slow down and enjoy every task. Whatever you’re doing, whether it’s a work task or taking a shower or brushing your teeth or cooking dinner or driving to work, slow down. Try to enjoy whatever you’re doing. Try to pay attention, instead of thinking about other things. Be in the moment. This isn’t easy, as you will often forget. But find a way to remind yourself. Unless the task involves actual pain, there isn’t anything that can’t be enjoyable if you give it the proper attention.
7. Single-task. Make this a mantra. Do one thing at a time, and do it well.
8. Eat slower. This is just a more specific application of Tip #6, but it’s something we do every day, so it deserves special attention.
9. Drive slower. Another application of the same principle, driving is something we do that’s often mindless and rushed. Instead, slow down and enjoy the journey.
10. Eliminate stress. Find the stressors in your life, and find ways to eliminate them.
11. Practice enoughness. All you really need is … enough.
12. Create time for solitude. In addition to slowing down and enjoying the tasks we do, and doing less of them, it’s also important to just have some time to yourself.
13. Do nothing. Sometimes, it’s good to forget about doing things, and do nothing. Here’s more.
14. Sprinkle simple pleasures throughout your day. Knowing what your simple pleasures are, and putting a few of them in each day, can go a long way to making life more enjoyable.
15. Practice being present. You can practice being in the moment at any time during the day. Here’s how.
16. Find inspirations. Learn from the best. What stirs something deep inside you?
17. Make frugality an enjoyable thing too. Instead of delayed gratification, don’t forget to enjoy life now while saving for later.   http://simplemarriage.net/peaceful-simplicity/

straddling Africa and America

I read this post yesterday from the director of Lwala Community Alliance. My friend Katherine works for them and has been their development director for a while. I thought you would be able to relate to much of what James talks about below. 

Photograph by the Lwala Community Alliance

Home. What a compelling, elusive word that is. What a strong hunger the human heart has for home, and what a hard thing it is to find and keep a home—not just a building, but a place to belong—a place to be from and a place to go to.—Barbara Brown Taylor

Throughout my entire childhood, my family lived in Central Pennsylvania, just three miles outside of Harrisburg, the state capital. I had never flown on a plane until my freshman year of college, which is hard to believe a million miles later. This early plantedness had some benefits. For one, I knew where I belonged — home was obvious. I also knew my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins well because weekends and holidays were always spent with family.

I remember that curious familiarity of arriving at my grandparents’ house in Altoona, PA, for Christmas each year. The ritual of driving up the steep incline of their street, often snow covered, honking once as we drove by their place to alert everyone we had arrived, and turning the car around at the hilltop to park safely with our emergency brake on and wheels turned in toward the curb. As we entered the house, the scent of well-known hugs and the sound of greetings like, “Hi, doll” gave me deep comfort in returning. The scene inside was never surprising — the classic elves on the stairs, the plastic mistletoe in the archway, the real fire, and the family favorite apple pie. There was something grounding in the predictability of it all.

As I write this, I am in Lwala, Kenya, for perhaps the 25th time and, like traveling to my grandparents’home, there is a deep comfort in returning. Going to Kenya is no longer an adventure but a seasonal ritual. The familiar routines are coaching myself through the long hours on the plane, arriving at night in the clammy Nairobi airport, overnighting at a small guesthouse where I am remembered by name, and traveling the following day to Lwala, which is seven hours west of the capital. Driving down the dirt roads as we near the village brings up that same warm sensation as approaching the hilly streets of Altoona. My relationships in the village also have a worn-in feel. After work most evenings, I walk around the surrounding villages and am greeted by so many familiar faces. 

This is not a second home, but a place of work. And as the leader of the Lwala Community Alliance, I am duty-bound to return quarterly to see the impact of our health and education project, which now serves 20,000 people in this area where 1 in 5 adults is HIV positive. In the last 6 years, I have been a part of a determined effort to increase child survival, reduce the burdens of HIV, and help girls and women succeed. And we are seeing real results. So I am not here to retreat and relax. I am compelled to return because of friends my wife Jena and I have here — friends who want to know how our baby is growing, friends who have shared in the labor of our mission together. But I primarily attend long meetings to review work plans and budgets, to encourage staff management to follow through on our goals, and to hear community concerns. With 180 Kenyan colleagues employed in various roles across our programs, we are out to prove together that locally based organizations rooted in the communities they serve are uniquely positioned to address poverty and poor health. 

Through the faithfulness of returning and working, we have great fondness for our second life in Lwala — one that is parallel to our life in the U.S. Finding the intersection in these concurrent worlds is not always easy, but there is something deeply satisfying about having relationships and routines in two otherwise distinct places. As much as I miss the surety of my childhood idea of home, I am grateful for the tension that stretches me between two continents. I am drawn back not as an explorer or safari gazer who longs for Africa in the naïve and ideal sense, but because I love what Africa has become for us — a place where we belong, a kind of home. And I know that some day when this ritual of returning to Kenya becomes less regular, I will be homesick.

The trouble and gift with any routine is that it wears away the romanticism. If you show up at Grandma’s house often enough, you see that under the surface, not everyone gets along. There are grudges and divorces and sicknesses, and over time, people you know will disappoint you. Others have expectations of you. The same is true for me in Kenya. I have been here frequently and faithfully enough that I see the inglorious parts of village life — people hurt me sometimes and have many expectations of me. I get mad when trusted workers cheat me, sad when friends die, and frustrated when colleagues quit. I have gotten involved deeply enough that I feel implicated in the success of the community and, at times, that is an undue burden. 

But Dietrich Bonheoffer reminds us that we know we have entered into genuine community only when it becomes difficult. We must move beyond the ideal of community and into the practical working out of community. If we can embrace a place and love it and determine to work out its difficulties, then we are in community. So somehow, sharing life in this one rural place called Lwala with my wife Jena, thousands of Kenyan acquaintances, and the staff of the Lwala Community Alliance through times of doubt and darkness alongside times of joy and redemption has brought us into true community. Through this working out, Lwala has become a home, a place to belong — one of the places we are from and a place to which we go. 

http://www.arthouseamerica.com/blog/the-ritual-of-returning-to-kenya.html

James Nardella is Executive Director of Lwala Community Alliance, a start-up health and education project serving 20,000 people in Migori County, Kenya, a region with particularly high rates of HIV and child mortality. Since 2009, he has overseen the hospital expansion now serving 3,000 patients per month, school programming serving 6,000 students, and employment opportunities for 180 Kenyans. This work has been featured by Apple, the Clinton Global Initiative, NPR, ABC World News, CNN, and in the documentary Sons of Lwala.

a heart wide open to joy

O God, we thank you for this universe, our great home, for its vastness and its riches, and for the diverse life which teems upon it and of which we are part. We praise you for the arching sky and the blessed winds, for the driving clouds and the constellations on high.  We praise you for the salt sea and the running water, for the everlasting hills, for the trees, and for the grass under our feet. We thank you for our senesce by which we can see the splendor of the morning, hear the jubilant songs of love, and smell the breath of the springtime.  Grant us, we pray, a heart wide open to all this joy and beauty, and save our souls from being so steeped in care or so darkened by passion that we pass heedless and unseeing when seven the thornbush but he wayside is aflame with the glory of God. Amen. 

pictures below from Green Lake on Saturday evening 

for the twenty-eighth

HAPPY 28th!!! 

(sending this now as I am headed to bed so that you can show 

Micah since the day is just dawning there.) 

from October 2012 

HAPPY 28th Micah!!! 

and a few more fun pictures below to share to give you some smiles:  

check out the picnic that Anna and Riley set up 

when Anna babysat there on Saturday morning :) 

from my Saturday morning run (one of my favorite views in Seattle) 

running companion

please come home soon or I might just have to invest in one of these. needless to say, We miss you so much. :) 

----------------------------------

NOTHING SAYS "YAY, EXERCISE" LIKE CHASING A FRIENDLY ROBOT

By Kelsey D. Atherton Posted 15 hours ago

Having trouble getting motivated to jog? What if, to help you along your way, there was a flying robot always a few steps ahead of you, its mechanical hovering body an exercise in technologically advanced mockery? Researchers Floyd Mueller and Matthew Muirhead at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia designed and built a system that lets joggers run with a quadcopter flying along for encouragement

Presented at the Computer-Human Interaction Conference in Seoul, the paper detailed a study where 13 casual joggers followed a drone on a 25 minute course. The drone flew a preset path along waypoints, and provided companionship to the joggers in a way similar to a running buddy or a dog. Much of the work of the researchers was configuring the drone so that it would work best as a companion. The quadcopter was programmed to fly 13 feet ahead of the joggers, though without sensors the quadcopter instead relied on the joggers’ pre-submitted track speed and flew approximately in front of where it was supposed to be.

Because the drone wobbled in the wind, its movements were less precise than a robot running on code might otherwise seem. The researchers quote one jogger describing the wobbles as a sign of personality:

“I am not sure of wind or whatever, but it started to wobble, and it started to crisscross in front of me, and I quite liked it, because it reminded me that I am running with something, I like running with a buddy, […] it gave it a bit of personality, a bit of character, I think what was cool about it, in that moment, cause it was like ‘Hey, follow me!’”

Joggers took to the drones right away. Much of the paper then describes how the researchers tailored the drones for jogging companionship, and thoughts about ways to do it in the future, like having the robot fly close in so the jogger react like its a nearby human competitor.

In the future, drones could be as common a jogging aid as Fitbits and smartphone pedometers. With sensors to collect data about their joggers, drones could become a hybrid companion and accessory, encouraging people to get exercise even if alone. And should jogging drones become common enough that they annoy bystanders, we already have a term for that: it’s robot smog.

[PCWorld]

TAGS:

• DRONES
 
• JOGGING
 
• UAVS
 
• UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES
 
• ROBOTS
 
• EXERCISE
 
• FITNESS
• HEALTH
 
• AVIATION

#7

Liam, just wanted you to know that my race number had your name all over it... 

Top Pot

Here is the picture I took while I was talking on the phone with you this morning 

when I woke up Anna (Sunday evening for you).... 

waking Anna up this morning for our donut run! 

these were so big I had to put the seats down in the car 

more doughnut costumes! 

this girl is such a good sport. :) 

she had to work harder than I did because her shoulders are not quite as big and so she had to keep shifting it around to hold onto it.  poor thing. :) 

Anna with the gal who won first prize in the costume contest :) 

we won 3rd!! 

Yum. 

 such a fun morning with Anna! 

These doughnuts are available for anyone who would like to use them in next year's doughnut dash. 

(and I love that I can say that because YOU ARE COMING HOME IN LESS THAN TWO MONTHS! WHOOHOOO!!!)   

Saturday morning run

Such fun to have a different route this morning and to drop off the sunscreen with Mo. 

She is a runner too so she did not look at me funny when this was the second time I was meeting and greeting her with a sweaty hug to pass on to you.  :) 

It was also sweet to meet here at Swedish because she was on the labor and delivery floor, and two of the last times I was there was when Anna was born and then coming there to see you when Liam was born!!   How is that possible that this was 11 years ago for Liam and 12 1/2 years ago for Anna??!! 

inspiration for your birthday

Elizabeth, since your birthday is just around the corner, and Bill, now that you are a year older.... we thought you'd appreciate this inspiration.

Bill, we love that you played rugby on your birthday.... How about something like this for a goal in another 40+ years?  

continuing to shout out HAPPY BIRTHDAY from the NW to you! 

what a gift you are. :) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CTWo9EfQ4Hc

Johanna Quaas, 86, isn't taking old age lying down. Instead, she's taking it spinning, jumping and twirling -- on the parallel bars, no less.

Last month, Quaas wowed the audience at the 2012 Cottbus World Cup in Cottbus, Germany, according to the Post Chronicle.Clad in a green leotard, she performed exhibition displays on both the floor and parallel bars.

Though the white-haired wonder has won 11 medals in senior gymnastic competitions, MSNBC reported, she currently practices gymnastics "just for fun."

It should be no surprise that this German octogenarian has a long history of athletic excellence. In 1954, Quaas was a member of the handball team that took the Eastern German Championship, she told Gym Media.

Party Time!

I don't think I've ever thrown a party for someone in absentia, but there is always a first. When 6:00 p.m. rolled around here, I wondered if your dreams there in Malawi had lion cakes and fish tacos and birthday banners dancing in your head. 

Know that we salute you from the NW and had a great time celebrating you tonight! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! 

https://youtu.be/TMBDCnlHqDA

the sun came out tonight for your party (but otherwise it was a bit rainy and cold here today!) 

tell Micah that this is a recipe that I will make with him sometime! :) 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO BILL!!!

Happy Birthday to you, Bill!! 

Here's a little sneak peek of some of our prep for your party tomorrow night, but I'm sending it now so you can actually enjoy it on the 23rd there when you wake up! 

a lion cake in honor of the birthday boy 

(the best I could do to have some sort of African theme...

it's also in honor of Liam and Micah's tales of your latest safari!) 

and of course the birthday banner is out for the occasion... 

wish you were here to don the hat, Bill. 

We are sending much love your way today!!!