A Century of Friends

Spending time with people of different age groups can be so insightful and enlightening.  When they are older than us, they can reach out a helping hand to guide us into our future decades.  They help us with not only their hard earned wisdoms, but also with examples of their successes and their challenges.  When they are younger than we are, they can remind us of our more youthful goals and ideals and even help us to remember how to have fun and to play.

Frank and I had a delightful 4th of July.  We hosted a simple afternoon garden party, a potluck, with just a few neighbors, friends and family.  In hindsight I realized, that in our guests, we had quite a nice representation of nearly a one hundred year span of time.  Let me introduce them to you now.

Over the years, we’ve grown quite close to our next door neighbor, Dorothy.  She grew up in the South and has many a tale to tell about situations she has encountered in her lifetime, like being one of only a very few women and the only black woman in her classes at teachers college.  Not too long ago, her doctor talked her into getting the shingles shot, as a preventative measure.  The next morning she woke up blind and in terrible pain with shingles in her eyes.  After several years, a corneal transplant has returned her vision, in part, to one eye.  She, Frank  and I meet out on the front lawn, several times a week to enjoy our eye exercises together.  We take a zoom class taught by “Your eye wellness guy,” Richard Miller, to naturally improve our vision and prevent visual decline. 

We have a little rental in the back and our tenant, Hugh, has become a lovely friend.  He made Lasagna, in a toaster oven, with only one cooktop to brown the meats, heat the sauce and boil the noodles.  It was a mastery of planning and timing to have the dish ready right on the spot at twelve o’clock.  

A few decades ago, Frank and I experienced eighteen deaths in twenty-four months.  It was a crash course in grief and at times we were totally overwhelmed.  I turned to Cal Poly, our local university for help.  They have a student job service to help connect community members who need a little help with students who are looking for a little work.  So, into our lives waltzed Loretta Joy Hartwell.  Just her name alone gives a pretty good picture of who she is.  She actually skipped out to her car after we completed our initial interview.  And that was the start of a life long friendship.  I consider her to be my adopted daughter.  She has had the good fortune to meet and marry her own true love, Ross.  And they now have two beautiful daughters, Bea and Gigi.  I was deeply blessed with the honor of being present for both of their births.  

Our nephew, Brett, came to school here at Cal Poly, just about twenty years ago.  And fortunately for us, and just like us, he decided to stay.  Now, his life has been graced with Lauren.  And she has graced all of ours with her warm connection and deep understanding.  Both of them have jumped right into our community spreading their love and sharing guidance with the wisdoms of their young years.

Darling, I call “Darling,” because that is actually her last name, and a perfect fit.  She and I met fresh out of college having both been accepted for the same job.  Standing out front at the Agricultural Commissioner’s Office, we learned later, that there were two positions being filled for Inspector Biologists.  At the end of the day, I suggested that we meet for a beer.  But, since neither of us were that crazy about beer, we went to her house instead and ate mushrooms, that she had grown herself, sautéed in butter.  Then I laid on her hardwood floor, under her grand piano, while she played Chopin, the Nocturne in E Flat Major.

Einar floated gently into our lives at a time when I thought I might not survive my thirties.  A tall Swede, and a technical master, he was overseeing the recordings of my soon-to-become spiritual mentor’s channeling sessions.  Jana Massey, who has since passed on, used to come through our town every few months and brought us “messages from spirit.”  Einar, Frank and I grew to love and cherish each other from that beginning and now, we chat or see each other almost everyday.  He is our main go-to-man for all things technical and the number one person I turn to for wise counsel during spiritual emergencies.  

Dorothy and Einar chatted for quite a while on the fourth.  Frank made fish tacos, the best that Ross had ever tasted.  And I served my famous vinegar drink: ice cold sparkling water with a dash of Bragg’s raw apple cider vinegar, a splash of vanilla, a few drops of orange extract and one drop of stevia.  Yum!  

The two girls and I dined on the little benches around the bird bath and then up on the deck for desert, homemade, neighborhood grown, fresh baked apricot pie.  Einar provided the half gallon of vanilla Häagen-Dazs.  “Soul food,” he calls it.  We had salads, fresh fruit and sauces and we even went up in the attic, to look at the puzzles and try on some Halloween costumes and plan our next tea party, with Lauren, up there.  

Then it was on to fireworks.  We started with my favorite, Dancing Ground Flowers.  The girls, Hugh and I had to wait for any passing cars and then huddled tightly together in the middle of the street until lit match successfully touched fuse.  And then we’d drop it, get away! and watch the show.  Ross and Brett both missed this as the lure of our twin reclining easy chairs called out to them to rest and digest.  They delighted in the invitation to a tiny little nap, followed by just another tiny little snack from the potluck table before joining the rest of us again for games on the lawn.

Thanks to Frank, the lawn was in perfect condition for a casual version of Boccee Ball.  After watching a round or two, even Dorothy joined in.  Having always been very athletic before her blindness, she set the standard and demonstrated a technique for double handed holds that we all started to use in the next game we played.  

Brett and Lauren not only supplied the fireworks, but they also brought a new to us but ancient game called Kubb.  I guess the Vikings used to play it.  Kubb is a game of skill and strategy, that has been likened to chess.  And like so many fun times, it involves throwing little sticks at bigger sticks and is perfect for groups that like to play on lawns.

We finished off the day writing our names with sparklers and burning “snakes,” those funny growing ash tendrils that get longer and longer after being lit.  And because of that ‘potluck principle of abundance,’ everyone took home leftovers: salad, tacos and pieces of pie for later.

It occurred to me this morning, while thinking back on the day, that this lovely little garden party with it’s many pretty tables and small bouquets of flowers was graced with someone from almost every decade of life.  Little Gigi, age eight, was under ten.  Bea, just ten, covered ten to twenty.  Hugh at twenty-five, filled the twenty to thirty spot.  Loretta and Lauren, thirty to forty.  Ross and Brett, forty to fifty.  Here we skip a decade, fifty to sixty.  But Frank and I, rising not quite yet to seventy, filled the sixty to seventy year span.  Dorothy covered seventy to eighty.  And Einar, at ninety-two, filled the ninety to one hundred decade.  As Frank said, “It was a Century of Friends.”  

Just before the final guests departed, Hugh, who had already returned to his studio, began to play the flute.  He is quite accomplished.  And like Darling, he has a Powell.   They have a gold lining which brings a warm and round tone.  We all quietly stepped out on the patio to listen as the sweet and lovely notes floated all around us, curling overhead on the air.  

Thanks for joining in with us.  How rich to live a life with so many friends of such a broad range of ages.  What a beautiful life it is and what simple pleasures we’ve all now shared together.

 

Josephine Laing
© 2024

Healing My Feet

 

 

Over the years, I’ve had various problems with my feet.  Some of the time, some have guessed plantar fasciitis.  Some of the time, some have guessed neuropathy.  Other times it has just felt like I’ve pulled a muscle in my heel.  In either case the end result has mostly been the same, it hurts.  And that has affected my desire to not stand very long and to not do a lot of walking.  

With each of these dilemmas, I’ve found a variety of ways to alleviate the pain.  Early on, just stopping eating bread stopped the discomfort I had felt as my feet first touched the floor in the morning.  What a relief that was.  And after about a year of no bread or wheat flour products, I was able to reintroduce these into my diet sparingly, like once or twice a week, or less, without any noticeable foot repercussions.

Another time I spent about fifteen minutes a day, gently coaxing the internal padding cells from the bottoms of my heels back into their proper place.  Apparently they had moved up to the sides of my foot and no longer offered cushioning to the balls of my heels.  Using my finger tips and my imagination to pull them back into place, incrementally and one at a time, I reconstructed that nice soft cushion under my heels.  I did this every day at the park, seated on the lawn, while my husband threw the ball for our dog.  It was fun to watch them play and it felt great to sit right down on the grass and tend to my self care.  Within a month or two the problem was resolved and my heel pads were restored.

Once I went to a podiatrist who said that I could have a surgery down below the base of my big toe that would straighten out that toe and potentially stop it from hurting and being crooked.  But, blessedly, I found an honest-to-God cobbler who made me beautifully hand crafted home-made leather shoes.  With these my big toes had room to point straight ahead, as nature had originally intended, rather than being forced to bend to the rounded or pointy tip that almost all women’s shoes have.  This is the style our feet have commonly been subjected to since childhood.  In about the same amount of time it would have taken to have and heal from the surgery, my big toes naturally just spread out in those soft roomy shoes and found their way to point straight ahead, all on their own.  End of problem.  And no more pointy shoes for me, thank you very much.

There have been a few times where I stood in an awkward position, perhaps on a slope, with my foot at an odd angle, and felt a little muscle deep in my heel or elsewhere in my foot give way, like a sprain or a strain.  It took me a while to realize that swimming, once or twice a week, would always strengthen the muscles in my feet and clear out the inflammation and resolve that discomfort nicely and often very quickly.

I find physical therapy (P.T.) to be one of the marvels of modern life.  I’m not too crazy about the more recent insurance modeled gymnasium version of the P.T. industry.  With the thumpa-ta, thumpa-ta ‘music’ blaring in the background and the raised voices and abrupt treatment that that environ condones, it has lost a lot of its sense of personal caring.  But still, keeping the body strong and mobile is one of the best ways that I know of to both prevent and quickly heal from any number of injuries, conditions or aches and pains.

Recently I’ve had the good fortune of being introduced to the bean box by my sweet and wonderful new niece, who is a Doctor of P.T.  The bean box is for healing feet.  You know those ‘Banker’s Boxes; they are about a foot wide, fifteen inches long and ten inches tall with holes for handles and a good snug fitting lid.  Well, you get one of those and fill it with ten pounds of dried beans.  I filled mine with pinto beans, cannellini beans and kidney beans.  Bigger beans are better because they are less likely to get stuck between your toes.  And ten pounds is just right, not too heavy to lift and plenty of beans to plunge your feet into.  And that alone feels soooo great!  

So, in the feet go and then leaving your heels still, you sweep together a mini mountain of beans with the front half of your feet.  Do this for a few minutes and then tear those mountains down by sweeping the beans apart.  Then do a similar thing with the toes remaining still and the heels doing the building and then tearing down those mini mountains.  You can also orient the box lengthwise and let your feet do cat paws, reaching for and pushing away the beans.  And the beans feel great flowing over and under your feet.  Of course, you always want to check to be sure there are no beans lingering between your toes afterward, and the box top makes the whole apparatus nice for storage.  I even decorated my bean box.  It’s a really fun set of exercises to do and just like swimming, (except that it only takes about five or ten minutes a day,) it keeps my feet nice and strong and fit, ready to do whatever I want to do.

And, as well, I still enjoy giving my feet a nice massage every night in bed just before I fall asleep, thanking them for all of the good work they’ve done that day.  I do my legs too.  I’s nice to thank our bodies and a little TLC (tender loving care) is always appreciated and feels so good.  Maybe your feet and arms and legs would like for you to do the same.  Give it a try.  You might just like it.  I sure do.



Josephine Laing
© 2024

As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor. Nor am I licensed in any healing modality. However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing. All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for. After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries. Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and in my videos could be dangerous for you to try. So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol. However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine. So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas.

Good Fortune

     

 

My husband Frank makes beautiful glass, both art and architectural works.  Not too long ago, he made this door with black glass undulating beneath the Chinese characters for happiness, blessings, and good fortune.  I came across this photo of it recently and it reminded me of all of the good fortunes that I have received, not only in my life, but also in Chinese restaurants over the years as I have enjoyed their delicious fare.

Being as spring is upon us and as it brings its promise of renewal and the good fortune and bounty of summer ahead, I thought I’d take this opportunity to share with you some of the good fortunes that I have collected and saved from the many fortune cookies that have blessed my dining table and my life.  I share them with you now, like affirmations to brighten your day as they have continued to brighten mine.  

Let yourself think of these like a waterfall of blessings showering over, around and through you.  And, as a little experiment, let yourself believe each one.  

You are always welcome in any gathering.
You have an ability to sense and know higher truth.
You should be able to make money and hold on to it.
You enjoy giving gifts of yourself to others.  You will be rewarded.
You are going to have a very comfortable old age.
Consider gain and loss, but never be greedy and everything will be all right.
Things are not always what they seem.
You have a captivating style all your own.
Elegant surroundings will soon be yours.
You will inherit a large sum of money.
Your energy is at its peak.  Channel it into fun activities.
You will be showered with good luck.
You will spend many years in material wealth.
Your love life will be happy and harmonious.
Your air of confidence naturally draws others to you.
The star of happiness is shining on you.

May we all be renewed with the love and joy for life that spring so often brings.

Josephine Laing
© 2024

Cast Adrift

 

Cast Adrift.  That's how we feel sometimes.  It's as if we don't know where we are going, or even why.  But often the soup just has to cook.  Time spent not knowing, just simmering has proven, in the past, for me, to be extremely beneficial.

The clouds of not knowing can settle down around us with a damp chill, closing in about our bodies and minds, leaving us feeling directionless, purposeless.  Sometimes, it's illness, sometimes it's financial devastation.  It can be social or environmental injustice, or simply a lack of connection with others and their support.  But if we hang in there, give it a little time, and our consideration, let the flavors, ideas and feelings meld together, our way forward gradually comes clear. 

I like to use affirmations and gratitude practices during those darker days to help me keep hope and trust alive.  All of the spiritual practices that we have learned can give us some direction.  Prayer, mantras, along with inspirational stories, poetry, music and art, these are the tools I turn to, to help me find the light ahead.

I remember years ago, while I was healing from a major injury, wondering day-after-day, why this devastating thing had happened to me.  What was to become of my life after so many changes had occurred, flipping everything I trusted and knew on its head?  I had gotten a degree in horticulture, had been running my own landscape business, had employees, had just bought a home and was planning to remodel and then everything stopped. I had to let the business go.  My financial situation shifted drastically.  I became sincerely dependent with no guarantee that I'd ever recover.

In that dim light of life, with the heat turned way down low, I simmered and grabbed what ingredients I could and tossed them into the stew pot of my days.  Meditation, dream-work, time spent musing quietly, alone with my thoughts, taking what small steps I could to help restore my peace of mind and my physicality.  It can be a slow process marinating in transformation.  The egg in the nest takes time to change and open.  The seed doesn't sprout overnight.  Dismal news can come.  We just have to let it go and keep focusing on the next one or two possible steps that we can see for the way ahead.

Peace Pilgrim used to say, "Stay in the present moment.  Do what needs to be done.  Do all of the good you can each day.  And the future will unfold."  This is a lovely prescription for finding one's way.  It has helped me greatly over the years.  It's the little steps that matter.  One at a time.  There is no rush.  It's a long life, and from my perspective, there are plenty of them.  So, we don't need to hurry.  We can take our time and go slow.

So, there I was, all those years ago, stuck in bed, doing next to nothing except visiting my chiropractor once a week, and slowly, incrementally, finding my balance again.  And that's when my empathy, my clairvoyance, my ability to see and know what was going on in the health and well being of others, started to emerge.  It certainly wasn't anything I had expected to have happen.  I had guided the ship of my life in a totally different direction.  But there it was, arising quietly and consistently from within me.  It took a process of many years to refine and smooth off the rough edges of my psychic skills.  But, as sure as the lady bug transforms from the larvae, a new me emerged.  When we trust ourselves and let our lives flow, riding the hills and valleys as gracefully as we can, our path eventually comes clear.

I remember hearing the story of a young man in Great Britain who had gotten off on 'a wrong foot,' and began his early adulthood stealing things.  He wound up in jail, got out, took on a small job that at first he didn't know how to do, but learned.  Then he found himself helping others, newly out of prison, in finding work and learning how to do those small jobs as well.  In time he had founded a nationwide service providing support for others who had walked a similar path and his purpose in life was revealed.  

We never know where these roads will take us, but if we hang in there, and do what we can to stay present and work daily to hold our heads above water, and help others whenever we can, the way before us will unfold.  We find that we were never really cast adrift, we just needed an unexpected course correction, to set us on the good and right road that was always before us.  From there we can look back, at the end of our lives, and see that the way was really always clear.  We just needed to simmer a little, let all of the ingredients meld and blend and create the true sustenance of our beings.

So, hang in there.  Trust yourself and the Universe.  Stay in the moment.  Stay the course and expect the best.  A deeper part of you already knows the way.  We just need to let it all gradually and gratefully unfold before us.

I will leave you with a little haiku-like poem that I wrote years ago.  It came to me after I awoke from a dream where I saw three of my footsteps in front of me, in a forest, in the deep snow.  Just three footprints.  On a clear bright sunny winter's day.

My feet are always falling - steadfastly - on my path before me.

© Josephine Laing 2024

 

Taking the Time to Heal

I recently pinched a nerve in my neck.  Nowadays they call it by a more technical term, Cervical Stenosis.  But this very human problem has been around for ages, probably since we evolutionarily started standing upright.  And quite a few people wind up in trouble with this sort of condition, especially in the later decades of life.  

For my own part, I had gotten a little too frisky flexing my neck one day and within two weeks, it went from bad to worse and then into agony.  I had to stop all of my work, lost all strength in my arm and then my fingers began to go all tingly and numb.  The pain was intense and traveled from my hand up to my shoulder.  

I did all of my usual home remedies: anti-inflammatory supplements and diet style, hot baths, homeopathics, natural herbal analgesics, massage, hot and cold therapies and I also visited a few alternative practitioners.  But no matter what I did, it just kept getting worse and nothing seemed to really help.  

The only thing that brought me any relief at all was sitting very still, with my arm propped up in just the right way and then after a time, the pain started to abate and it would begin to get a little more comfortable.  So that's what I did.  I simply sat and read some nice uplifting books.

The medical profession had quite a few options for me.  They had drugs, and I tried a few, but they just made me feel pretty awful on top of being in pain.  A friend of mine had gotten a cortisone shot in her neck, some years before, with her pinched nerve.  She said it took about four months after that to fully resolve itself.  I considered that, but the down side was that it would most likely seriously mess with my blood sugars.  Another option was to do what they did to my brother and carve away some bone and put a mini railroad track in my neck, in order to separate and support my vertebra.  I figured that all of those were things that I could certainly consider down the line if I needed them.  But I thought I'd first try time.

It did take a couple of months for things to start to settle down.  But then they did.  And I remembered that that was what my mom used to say about healing from significant injuries, back on the farm, when she was a girl.  Doctors were few back then and medical care was rudimentary.  Mostly the farmers, themselves, were the vets, and the housewives were the healers.  When someone got really banged up, they put them in bed and kept them there.

 In our modern culture we try to speed the healing, and make the repairs as quick as possible, so we can get back in the game.  But, I'm thinking, after this recent episode, that there is some real wisdom in simply taking the time to heal.  

Now, it is true that all of that lounging around let me get drastically out of shape, even very muscularly weak.  And, putting a stop to my work hit our pocket book quite a little bit as well.  But our spending dropped too.  There wasn't much need to go out and get anything, other than groceries.  And with so much free time, I wound up having lots of laughs and plenty of chats with my friends and with my sweet husband, Frank.  So, other than the pain in my arm, I was quite happy and relatively healthy.  

After about eight weeks, the pain had subsided enough that I could start doing a few things around the house, but I could tell I was really out of shape and my balance wasn't great, either.  I figured I needed to have some basic physical therapy.  Fortunately my new niece, my nephew's betrothed, is a physical therapist and I was so relieved to be able to work with her.  

We met in either of our homes, instead of going to a P.T. clinic, where the therapists always seem to be rushed these days, and often have to yell over the booming exercise music.  That sort of an environment didn't seem as healing to me and I really appreciated the quiet and personal attention of one-on-one.  It has been another eight weeks now, of daily exercises, starting very gently at first and checking in once a week for a few more exercises and some nice deep tissue massage and I'm so very glad to say that I'm starting to feel good as new once more.

Sometimes all it takes is a little time and the willingness to let the world go on by for awhile until we heal and are ready once more to get back in the swing of things.  And blessedly, in this case, for me, that was true.  But, whether it is a pinched nerve, a different injury or an illness, listening to your own inclinations and guidance from within and then taking the time to do what needs to be done to heal is always a good idea.

My wish is for us all to have the good grace to be able to take the time to go slow, do less and accomplish more.  Blessings to you as we enter these longer nights and the darker half of the year. 

 

 

As a Clairvoyant Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Intuition Instructor, I share many tips for leading a healthy and fulfilling life.  Please be advised that I am not a doctor. Nor am I licensed in any healing modality. However, I have had years of experience in alternative and complementary health and healing. All healing programs, including standard western medical protocols in addition to natural therapies, can cause harm rather than the benefit that you may be searching for. After all some people can have a strong reaction to something as seemingly innocent as peanuts or strawberries. Therefore, anything that I may recommend in these blogs and in my videos could be dangerous for you to try. So, it is important that you Ask Your Doctor First before trying any natural healing protocol. However, most medical doctors have little experience regarding natural healing programs and herbal medicine. So please understand if your doctor is unfamiliar with these ideas.

"Do nothing. Time is too precious to waste."

 

This somewhat famous lesson from the Buddha, "Do nothing.  Time is too precious to waste." has indeed perplexed me from time to time, because there are so many important and worthwhile things to do.  And there is also so much that really and truly needs to be done.  But then, blessedly, I find myself just sitting quietly somewhere, maybe gazing up at the clear blue sky, or indulging in a little day dream, and then I get it.  The being part of me, the human being, rather than the human doing, settles my mind once more, and I fall into a deeper reality, a freer and wiser place within myself.  

There is such an emphasis on productivity in our Western culture, what with the rush and pushing of time.  And yet so often our most profound understandings and our sudden unexpected inner knowings for our best course of action pop into our heads, not while we are trying to figure it all out, but instead these insights occur most often while we are doing nothing.  It is as if we humans really do need to step aside once in a while, to let it all come clear and slide into place.

Ram Dass, in his seminal work, Be Here Now, demonstrated the bursts of creativity that can come when we allow ourselves to simply focus on the moment.  Watching the cat stalking stealthily in the garden, or a bee visiting a series of flowers, gazing into a campfire, or taking in the silence and stillness of the night, letting the mind simply focus on what is present, for just a few minutes, now and then, is natural and a very important part of who we humans are.

In our rush of technology, and too often wrongly in the name of efficiency, somehow the current trend has resulted in us letting these precious moments of doing nothing slip farther and fewer away.  Instead we play word games or distract ourselves with videos, leaving the television or the radio to play in the background.  Or we listen to talks or the news.  All good ventures unto themselves and completely justifiable.  But not so good for the seemingly ever increasing abstinence from open windows of freely attentive time.  Time where nothing is happening.  Time where we are not trying to meditate or take a nap.  Time where we just take a little break and let ourselves be.

Our brains get so used to us filling every moment with varying pursuits, sounds and distractions, that it actually starts to feel uncomfortable to do without.  Open space for our mind's to gaze at something, or to wander around in, become no longer familiar, and it can start to feel really weird to do so, unless we consciously begin to cultivate empty time, intentionally, once again.  

Allowing this free flow of mind is important, because it is in this open state of simple clarity that epiphanies arise.  Inspirations live here.  The non-focused gentle resting of our attention opens the door to our connection with everything.  This is how we spontaneously see the bigger picture and move past our fears or self-imposed limitations and progress into the free flow of fresh ideas and more prescient understandings and deeper connections.

So, though I too can get frequently lost in the 'brownie points' of checking things off of my 'to do' list, and rushing on ahead to getting things done, the Buddha's words do reach through this furor from time to time and remind me of the clarity that I can find by just taking a moment to look around and do nothing.  So, join me.  Let's just relax and let the moment in.

Swedish Death Cleaning and Plein Air

 

I recently heard a talk on Swedish death cleaning by a woman who wrote a book on this idea.  Apparently it is an old tradition in Sweden where, as the decades of one's life march along, we prepare progressively more and more for our eventual passing.  This primarily involves lightening our load and cleaning up our act.  It also makes everything a lot easier for those we leave behind.  This sounds like a good and sensible thing to me.

For all of us baby boomers and for all who come after, as we enter our fifth and sixth decades or are even pushing our ninth, it only makes sense to let go of some of the things we enjoyed in our twenties, thirties and forties.  I no longer wish to drive a convertible and I don't keep a horse anymore.  The convertible I drove in high school was an old beat-up jalopy that got me into my twenties and my former wild mustang lived with me, on the skinny, for nearly four decades.  We sure did have some fun.  But, when she put her old tired bones to rest, letting go of that time and lifestyle was appropriate for me too.

The seasons of our lives do change and paring down can be a blessing.  Several of my friends have really embraced this and have significantly downsized: giving away two thirds of their wardrobe, emptying filing cabinets and bookshelves, re-distributing or tossing old photographs and art works, and leading lighter lives.  One friend of mine re-homed her two little dogs.  She loved them enough to realize that they needed more care and she needed more time to rest and heal.  It's all good and we can let go.

This brings me to plein air.  Because, as we come to realize that statistically we may only have five, ten, fifteen, or, if we are lucky, twenty years, of quality living still to go, (which of course can happen to any of us, at any age,) it only makes sense to spend this precious gift of life doing as much of what we love to do as we can. 

I have one older friend who is devoting her life to caring for wild birds.  She is increasing our local bird species populations and supporting others on their migration routes.  When walking past her home, the birdsong is more than noticeable, it's incredible and loud, a veritable symphonic cacophony.  Given how precipitously our bird species numbers have fallen in the last five or six decades, this use of her time and energy is remarkable.  She also loves to paint.  And so do I.  But I love colored pencils, for their simplicity, even more.

Together, she and I enjoy sharing plein air sessions.  En plein air is french for "in the open air," and refers to painting out of doors instead of in an art studio.  During our day to day travels about town, we each keep our eyes open for beautiful views.  And then, as often as we can, carving out a little time, we set a date, deciding on morning or afternoon light and we go!  And then we sit.  We bring our jars of water and pads of paper, pencils, brushes, blankets and colors.  And then, for hours at a time, with little sandwiches packed and a few pieces of fruit, we chatter away about this and that, matching the colors, as busy as those birds, doing what we'd really love to do.  May you be so blessed as to be able to do so, too.