Yesterday I wanted to lie down and found that all six of the sleeping surfaces aboard Rejoice were covered with projects that were on pause for some reason. We woke today on the settees in the saloon (the bench-couches in the main cabin) because our berth is torn up to work on the battery bank underneath it and finishing that hasn't been the first reasonable priority. My sewing machine is slipping stitches. I spent half an hour on the phone with Intuit to reregister my copy of Quickbooks because of a prior snafu. The man I was speaking with was not very intelligent, not very friendly, and I was unsure of every piece of verification data he wanted because it was addresses and phone numbers and I have moved so much in recent years. Final preparations are like turning on a faucet at our bank account. We sat down last night to invite people to our going away gathering, which meant sifting a thousand social media contacts each and thinking over and over "Oh, I love you! Do you live here?" Turns out there are more people we love than FB allows one to invite to an event, so if you didn't get an invitation, that means only that we ran out of invitations before we got to your name.

When I type these words, it sounds like I'm saying that everything is a wreck, or that I am. We are, however, fine and well. The little Zen Calendar today is Sogyal Rinpoche. The act of meditation is being spacious. Yes, that. It's hard to express how this life is both so much more demanding and yet so much simpler than our prior life.

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. -- William Blake

There is so much spaciousness in my being now, in both of us. Acceptance and allowing feel so much easier. I certainly feel sadness and frustration at times, but when I pause, close my eyes, and think of how to say them, I see small threads in a great vastness. There are other threads: patience, compassion, and a thick vein of humor.

Walt Whitman: I am large, I contain multitudes.

Around all the emotions: space. This great spaciousness. The pure awareness, the pure witnessing consciousness that the teachings tell us is our nature is so profoundly evident right now. I am so grateful.

Virgil's Sea Room
Thursday August 23
6p
All are welcome.