A great 37 miles?

Dearest Blog Reader:

I hope that this blog finds you doing well. I am fine. I am a bit better than fine actually. Bev and I took the advice of my last blog. We took a minute and took a breath. We have gravitated back to Beverly Shores and Lake Indiana, which is one of my favorite places to get away from most of it all. We have visited often enough that we are starting to get more and more adventurous. Yesterday, Bev and I went on a biking trek. The goal was 50 miles to Warren Woods which is a climax beech and maple forest in southern Michigan. It is truely a beautiful, majestic place; straight and true timbers reaching 100 feet into the air. It is a sight to behold; especially for a lumber jack that is in the middle of cutting six cord of wood for winter heat. Next time bring the chainsaw????

I mentioned that our goal was 50 miles. In a shout out to Doyle, Bev's dad, our eyes were bigger than out tummies. We bit off more than we could chew. The wrong socks were selected for the breathable shoes that were brought to the North country. Note to self; breathable equals colder that heck on a bike in 40 degree weather with a 18 mph head wind. Thankfully, we made it as far as Redamack's legendary burger shop before turning back. Free restaurant review alert. Redamack's has good burgers. However, "legendary" is a bit overrated. It is not legendary; unless you heard a legend that Redamack's doesn't serve coffee and you have to purchase your fries separately from your burger; then it is legendary. Haven't Michigander's heard of warm liquids or the meal deal concept?

This moment, to take a breath, to relax, to eschew our usual weekend activities, coincides with my one-hundredth blog post. That's right you can brag to your friends that you have read approximately 14,000 words of legendary prose. Go ahead take a moment to savor that accomplishment. There you go. Has the dizziness and light headed feeling passed?  Good, you'll be okay.

I want to thank you my loyal readers for your commitment to these endeavors. I can't tell you how many times each week the words "dear blog reader, I hope this finds you doing well causes me to smile as I contemplate the next installment.

Personal notes about 100 blog posts;
Most read; Beware. Really? I know. It is just a rant about how the powers that be try to keep us scared and cowering in the corner. It's success can be attributed to the fact that I used a google image of a beware sign. When people google beware that image shows on the results page, a few extra random people click on the blog and have a read.

Favorite; Girls Gone Wild.  It is my favorite because it was the first one and its  about one of my children taking a risk and jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.

Best; Turkey in the Straw. It is a blog about butchering turkeys; which for me was one of the most spiritual acts of my life. I know it sounds weird, but for me, it was true.

Most recognized recurring character; Assassin Deer. Which generated best comment on Facebook. "That was weird."

Most impact; Based on reader comments, May I Have This Dance? It was a blog that surprised me. A brief witness to two cyclists riding by our peony patch in May. She called out to him, "Do you see those flowers?" That encounter led to one of the easiest blogs that I have written.

Most impact; Based on world climatology; Man Made Climatology. This blog also took the most planning and preparation; planning that took 9 months, two continents, and three co-conspiritors to implement. The result was Issac, a category 3 hurricane that went a long way to breaking the drought. The downside is that we now have copycat hurricane seeders in the Carribean. Good luck New York as Sandy makes her way through town.

The rest are there to read and enjoy. The blogs are getting easier to write. There was a while when I would open the word processor with no idea of what to write. I would arrive with just the discipline of weekly words. Those were the hardest to write. Starting with typing random thoughts, an idea would start to emerge. Typing a few more lines, a theme, that could be forged into 1400 words, would take form. Today, the ideas brew throughout the week. They steep in the tea of my weekly life and are ready to go by the time I sit here with you.

Coming at writing with the necessary discipline to forge ideas into a theme is an important first step to be a good writer. One-hundred blogs have given me a brief glimpse of that. The second step is motivational. What is my motivation for writing this blog? I write this blog for the attention. I am like a dog who lives to have his belly rubbed. I am not a guard dog. I do not fetch or plat frisbee. I do no heard sheep. I live to have my belly rubbed. I watch the stats closely after each posting. I long for likes on Facebook. I celebrate every reposting; knowing that it will drive the stats. I pray for a viral post. Thankfully, the fever isn't as high as it was when I first started writing. I am getting closer to writing and letting it go. It will mean that I have gotten to a point where I have written what best reflects what I see. I think that then these blogs will be good for me.

It is good that I am a better bike rider than writer. The goal was 50 miles. Our best was 37. It was a beautiful 37 and not a missed 13.

Take care.

Roger

There you go. Take a deep breathe?

Dear Blog Reader;

I hope this blog finds you doing well. I am pretty well. Things have definitely shifted. While we had a near frost experience on September 22, two weeks of autumnal tilt away from the sun has settled the issue for this year. Last Sunday night we had a freeze. I don’t know if my weatherman knew that he was doing this, but he mentioned that it was the coldest day of the year since April 12. That was salt in the wounds of we local apple and cider lovers. April 12 is the day that sealed our apple a day fates. The tougher plants will still do some growing. In fact, all of my greens, carrots and beets are still growing just fine. I hope to get some row cover in operation and have good greens through Thanksgiving. I still have to plant my garlic for next year. It is all over for the weaker cousins though. I say good riddance to the gypsum weeds; goodbye morning glory. A lawn mowing season that started in March is nearly over. We would have had buy replacement mowers if the middle three months had not been so dry. However, even the cheapest of mowers aren’t challenged when playing connect the buckhorn.

This turn in the weather coincides with a big change at work. We are moving a production facility with all of its attendant doodads and thingamablobs. It doesn’t really matter what they were or even how far they were moved. It was a challenge and I am glad that it is nearly over. We will spend a week or two looking for an odd misplaced doodad and that thingamablob that we can’t do with out. However, the physical part is over. That is a good thing.

They say that moving is one of the biggest stressors in one’s life. Convincing a department that a move is a good thing, that all of the work will get done on time for the move, reassuring employees that everything will turn out okay, making seating and office assignments, eliminating reserved parking, these things cause the stress to go off of the charts. I was reminded of this the other day when I couldn’t remember the last time that I just sat down and breathed deep. That recognition of lack of deep breaths has come back to me several times the last two weeks as the pressure of the move came to a head. I would be in a meeting helping 3 or 4 people identify solutions to potential problems that we had not even faced yet, and suddenly, I would noticed that I hadn’t taken a good deep breath.

I attended a wonderful wedding. It was a low key, kick back, enjoy yourself and those around you event. The families that were coming together genuinely enjoyed one another. It strikes me that the bride and groom, now husband and wife, have a sense about them that they know the wedding was not the event to succeed at but the marriage. I like those kinds of weddings. In spite of that, I had an odd sensation at the end as the families decided that a critical mass of festivants had made their way to the door and it was time to start cleaning up. I sensed that these family members started breathing again.

I don’t think that I would have noticed except that I find myself not breathing deep because of Grace and Chris’ impending nuptials next June. My shallow breathing is not out of fear or foreboding. I have the same sense of blessing for these two that I witnessed last weekend. They know that the wedding isn’t the thing. The marriage is. They are committed to leaving their biological families and knitting a new family between themselves with God’s help. I know these things and yet my breathing is still shallow. In my mind’s eye, I can see myself bussing tables, pulling table cloths, stacking chairs and suddenly realizing that I can breathe.

I have a counseling friend who tried to convince me that the greek for  the holy spirit was breath of life. God “breathed” life into Adam. He tried to convince me that deep breathing is a spiritual exercise. This move and these two weddings have gone a long way in convincing me that is the truth. I believe it because in the physical here and now, I have a tendency to forget to breath deep. The physicality of moving all of that stuff, concentrating on all of those details sucks my breath away. There is no time to breath deep. Even more telling is breathing deep causes me to forget about the physical for a moment. It takes me elsewhere for a brief period of time. It shifts my attention to the spiritual.

In the heat of the moment, shifting attention to the spiritual is the problem. It is the part that I don’t trust. The spiritual won’t get the boxes moved, won’t develop an emergency escape plan, and it certainly won’t maintain production while the movers are taking your machines when electricity isn’t quite connected in the new building. The spiritual won’t get the dress made, the cake made, the invitations addressed. No, it is the physical world that will get these things done.

The spiritual-physical dichotomy is one we are forced to deal with in this corporeal world with what I believe to be spiritual underpinnings.  Physically, I want to get things done. I get a kick out of imposing my will on a task with a pile of challenges and a calendar. I love to do that. However, I can only do it for so long and then I have to stop and breathe. That stopping used to bother me. I was being lazy. I wasn’t being productive. Things weren’t getting done because I wasn’t doing them. As I read CS Lewis, I was able to embrace the spiritual-physical dichotomy. In Screwtape Letters, he described it as the law of undulation. It is natural to undulate between the spiritual and the physical through out our lives. They are just both a phase of who we are. Both are of the kingdom of God. It is natural to have times of great physicality; times where we are stretched and pulled towards doing things. Just as it is natural for those physical things to tire us, it is natural to feel a great need to rest; a time to stop and breath.

That is what happened last week. The cold came and put a stop to much of the physical. There will be a little bit of growing to do in the weeks ahead. But the time to stop and breath is here. So take a nice deep breathe and relax.

Take care.

Roger.