Personal Growth

evanescent

/ L. Jean Snow VanOrden / Leave a comment

Until this singular moment, as I stood at the kitchen sink peeling carrots, there had been no sound of a dancing, sparkling stream: not yesterday, or the day before, or even weeks before. My attention suddenly abandoned carrots and ranch dip and focused on the sound.  Out of nowhere, I heard the startling noise of rushing water gurgling unfettered. Incongruous, it sang from beyond the shady green sliver of muddy lawn behind our house. Normally, I went about the day’s chores accompanied only by the slosh of the dishwasher and the whir of the air conditioner. Until now, on this languorous hot spring day heavy with aching nostalgia.

Our family had recently moved to temporary housing and didn’t know for sure where we would go next. We were stuck in limbo during a stifling heat wave, missing our former home with yet no vision for the future. Then came this flash of grace: more than swiftly flowing water, more like magic cast from some mysterious provenance.

The shallow creek bed strewn with leaves had not shown a drop of moisture since we moved into the tattered rental home at the top of an ordinary suburban street. A house remarkable only because of its perch on a beautiful mountainside.  Steep and meandering, the creek bed had, in fact, become almost invisible in the shadows under the cottonwoods and willows that bordered our backyard. I wandered out onto the back porch transfixed by the music of the stream mingled with the shrieks of my children . . . joyously entranced children: laughing, splashing, chattering, released from the mundane heat and lethargy of a late spring afternoon. 

Stirred from heat induced drowsiness, they instinctively waded into the water and, with the plentiful creek stones, began building dams and crenelated castles above crystal pools and grottos. Smooth, round, flattened, or egg-shaped stones molded for eons under the sylvan hand of snow-melt dripping from mountain peaks and ledges. Hidden springs and freshets gaining momentum, carving gullies and ravines above our mountainside home until their water was unleashed into our back yard. But unleashed from where exactly? Where had it been imprisoned? Why did it hide until this rapturous moment when it burst forth at our doorstep?    

We barely questioned the source of the water for being absorbed by all the avenues of play and delight that having our own enchanted stream presented. Rare treasures, the mystical sound of water rolling over stone, the occult squish of slick mud between our toes, and the bewitching baptism of grimy feet in the ankle-deep freezing water. Our imaginations were suddenly awakened to dreams unfettered on what had seemed a dead end day.

I wanted to attribute the miracle of the stream to a guardian spirit, but I suspected yearly irrigation system maintenance halted the normal diversion of water into the more civilized irrigation canal that bordered the subdivision. Some rusted mechanical contrivance redirected the water into its wild ancient courses which joined the dry streambed that bordered our backyard.  Which released the children and I from a spate of listlessness for a few quixotic days.

Eventually, the water abruptly stopped flowing in our creek. A tragedy so poignant we quickly shrugged it off to blunt the pain of loss. We were between permanent homes and couldn’t absorb another drop of sadness. “Oh, well. It was great while it lasted.”  And truly it was more precious for having been a brief enchantment. Later, I reflected on the joy of those few days and marked them as important, a shimmering family memory. Reflecting back on special events is useful, but I learned from this cooling summer baptism that there is  something more deeply quenching to our rushed souls:  slowing down to notice the iridescence and the rush of joy emanating from seemingly common occurrences that can be wild delights in our neatly channeled lives.

Too often I have been missing from some of the most important moments of my life. Caught up in anxious ruminating, I missed much of the glory of those moments. At last, fortuitously getting a proverbial two by four to the head, I see that life is full of extraordinary veiled magic which can only be perceived as it happens. Enchantment, not from grand events or spectacularly rendered achievement, but from gleaming instants that can be lost in the blink of an eye. Sharp attention to the present reveals the sorcery of small things.

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8 MYTHS ABOUT CURIOSITY

/ L. Jean Snow VanOrden / Leave a comment

In December, the world went blank with snow and fog, a good metaphor for my state of mind. I had to dig deep to understand why I hadn’t been writing regularly for months. Writing is my thing. When there is nothing else, there is writing. Yet there I was in the jolly old month of December feeling like everything was futile and I had no reason to be writing anything anywhere. Why should anyone care what I had to say?  I was stuck in my head, my avalanching insecurities burying my joy.

Then I tripped on the first stone in my path. Tripped, as in being suddenly forced to wake-up and take a good look around. I landed face first in the grinding question: Why do I write?  I don’t have to. No one is dishing out assignments except myself. An answer finally came burning through the mist, simple and free of ego.

The plain bare fact is I don’t write because anyone will read or appreciate what I write ( that is a pleasant afterthought but not my purpose). I write because I always feel better when I do. A letter, or a journal entry, or an essay to post on my blog can elicit the sensation of a weight fall from my shoulders and euphoria lifting me from the ground. It is no more complex than that. Writing energizes me, heals me, sends me on my way knowing that if I can write, I can do anything.

Answering that question freed me to trip over the next stone in my path.  What shall I write?  Why am I afraid of that chasm, the one at the border of the blank page?  Why am I afraid of the gaping monster that guards the edge of creativity? Again, a simple thought cleared things up.

I was reminded of a December 29, 2015 post on my son’s facebook page, IMPACT-Self-Made Influencers Changing the World:

“This ties in with things I’ve said recently about following your curiosity. It’s a compass that has served me exceedingly well in 2015.

Then Todd Henry mentioned in my interview with him that curiosity was the thing that had helped him most to build his influential work.

This idea was also backed up by an Elizabeth Gilbert video I discovered last week (you may have seen it making the rounds) where she states that she no longer gives anyone the advice to find their purpose, but rather encourages people now to follow their curiosity.”

Curiosity is the bridge from where we are over the chasm to what we want to be and do. This idea burned through my fog of anxieties and self-doubt in a way nothing else has for a long time. We can be on fire with creativity through curiosity. We need to remember a few important myths about curiosity which tend to scare us off.

  1. Curiosity can kill you – it is dangerous
  2. Curiosity isn’t work – it is for lazy people
  3. Curiosity is frivolous and is for “pie in the sky” thinkers  – the curious are fruitless dreamers
  4. Curiosity gets you in trouble – it leads to bad decisions
  5. Curiosity is only for people with a high degree of  imagination and intelligence – it isn’t for ordinary folks like me.
  6. Curious people are annoying – they lack focus and have their fingers in too many pies
  7. Curiosity doesn’t lead to self-improvement – be safe and just follow conventional wisdom
  8. Curiosity is a waste of time – there are too many distractions

I’m going to leave it to you to figure out why these myths can lead poor health, poor emotional IQ, and stifled creativity.  Curiosity, like any powerful tool, has the potential to lead to problems but that is the way it is with all knowledge. Without curiosity, there is no exploration, and without exploration, there is no creativity or progress.

It is all too easy to be so focused on security and following safe rules and habits that we forget to be curious. By writing, whether just for myself or for public consumption,  I bring my being more in focus with my own healthy curiosity. Curiosity is the energy by which the universe becomes an endless source of delight. Writing gives us greater access to that joy.

 

 

ALASKA AND OTHER FRONTIERS: 2016 Curiosity Encounters

/ L. Jean Snow VanOrden / 2 Comments

The piercing cry of a wild animal woke me. In the frigid darkness, I couldn’t remember where I was. I blinked my sleep-sticky eyes until I could focus on the gray vehicle ceiling only six inches from my nose. “Oh, yeah. Now I remember,” I murmured as my brain fog cleared.

We were parked at the edge of a roadside turnout along a roughly slashed track snaking its way through the woods of Northern British Columbia. The early a.m. cold burrowed under the multiple quilts and blankets of our makeshift bed; a foam mattress spread atop what was left of our household goods. All were stuffed into the back of an ancient Volkswagen bus spray painted a respectable two-toned black and white to disguise generous patches of rusty and ragged holes.

I shut my eyes and snuggled against the curve of my husband’s warm back like a heat seeking missile. Another wail punctuated the dark. The noise came from something inside the van. I groaned, as more fog lifted from my sleep-starved mind. I had brought a baby into this frozen wilderness. The tiny body wedged between me and my snoring husband, squirmed and cried out more loudly.

Ralph mumbled in his sleep, “Make him stop.”

“Good luck with that,” I grumbled. How do you“make” an infant do anything? First: change the soggy diaper. Six-month-old Jason kept up his fretful noise as I switched out his diaper and dressed him in fresh pajamas. Second: if I’m lucky, he’s just hungry, try nursing him. Again, he kept up his crying; snorting and thrashing away from the proffered food source. Final option: take him for a walk down the hall and around the living room. “Too bad, there is no living room. I’ll just have to pace the edge of the road.”

I slid head-first into the passenger seat where I pulled on my more-pretty-than-practical windbreaker. I swaddled Jason tightly in a flannel blanket, then stepped out of the bus into the freezing cold of early October along the Alaska Highway. Undeterred by all my attempts to calm him, Jason greeted the dawn with a howl akin to wolves under a harvest moon. This far north, winter was only a few short days away.

In a fit of youthful bravery (or delusion) which overwhelmed stale conformity (or good sense), we quit school and set out to follow our hearts. We were among many dreamers endeavoring to conquer the Alaska Highway or go broke trying. We sold most of our possessions, bought the Volkswagen bus, and headed off to take advantage of tempting opportunities beckoning from Alaska.

Opportunities created by the building of the Alaska pipeline. At the time, the Alaska Highway was a serpentine ribbon of mostly dirt and gravel fraught with myriad dangers for untried vehicles and unseasoned motorists. We suffered multiple flat tires, two broken fan belts, and blew one engine along the way.

We started our trip at Palos Verdes, California, my hometown, bidding a reluctant farewell to my unconvinced parents. From there, we drove north on Highway 101 hitting one fabled beach town after another. At Crescent City, California, we cut inland and took Interstate 5 through Oregon and Washington then crossed the Canadian border at Peace Park near Vancouver, B.C.

A stop in Prince George, British Columbia, to visit friends was lengthened by two weeks when our engine blew up in the autumn stained mountains outside Chetwynd. Our friends kindly rescued us and towed us back to Prince George (many thanks to the Towers family, our thanks back then were not adequate). My mechanic father, unable to come to our aid, loaned us the money to repair the van. Two weeks later, after Ralph spent many backbreaking hours rebuilding the engine, we set off for Dawson Creek, B.C; the starting point of the Alaska Highway. Northward, every town and landmark became more remote, the road narrower, increasingly hemmed in by forest. We rolled into Fort Nelson, B.C. just in time for a tire to go flat right in front of a gas station. The lug nuts were so tight we couldn’t have loosened them without the mechanics power wrench. Miles north of Fort Nelson, long past dark, we pulled into an isolated turnout alongside the road to sleep.

Now, with Jason still howling and the sky beginning to lighten we abandoned our efforts to get more rest and decided to get back on the road. But now, it was the bus that was being cranky.

“Rrrrrrrrr.” The cabin of the bus was like a refrigerator. The starter wound round and round but the engine wouldn’t fire up.

“Rrrrrrrr.” The starter still sounded vigorous, but the battery was getting weary. Time for prayers to fly heavenward.

Ralph milked the battery once more. This time, the engine coughed and sparked to life. Had the baby not awakened us, the cold may have thickened the oil or deadened the battery past reviving. Engine trouble at that stage would have left us in a sore pickle, on a lonely road, miles from any assistance.

Miles more north, exhausted, and utterly sick of the road, we came upon Lliard Hot Springs Provincial Park along the Lliard River. A paradise of steaming jade-green pools veiled in mist surrounded by giant spruce, paper birch, dripping ferns, and wildflowers. This will forever be our family’s favorite spot on the Alaska Highway. Over the years, this magical place has refreshed our road-weary bodies and spirits in its gentle currents of hot and cool springs of water. We have visited it in the full bloom of lush green summer and when the pools were deeply pillowed by thick banks of snow. The advantage of a winter visit is there are no clouds of mosquitoes. Winter accentuates the other-worldliness of the pools in their vapor wrapped loneliness, secluded in a wilderness of white.

Since that first Alaska Highway journey, we have explored its serpentine length seven times. Each trip starts with the excitement of knowing, without question, we will experience adventure. We know that by the time we reach Lliard Hot Springs, however, the shine of that adventure will be substantially dimmed by the fatigue and the grime of the road. A hot soak at Lliard Hot Springs is the watershed divide between road-sick and renewal of our enthusiasm for the wilderness highway.

It occurs to me right here and now, as I do my daily writing routine, that I need such paradise-like renewals in my life’s journeys of creativity, of trying to live rightly, of making it from one milepost to the next. I have tackled many Alaska Highway adventures, both literally and figuratively. Many of my highway pilgrimages have been thrust upon me; illness, death, less desirable events of all kinds. However, the best strategy is to pack up and move forward, making the most of them. Other such journeys have been voluntary, well planned, and happily anticipated. Yet still, there is need for a restorative pause at some refreshing wayside lest I drain my overtaxed battery. In either case, the image of the calm and peace of Lliard Hot springs is a refreshing vision for such a pause. Especially useful in winter when relief from the itch of summer distractions allows stillness.

As usual, January suggests that we look over the landscape ahead and refresh our perspective. This year, I am taking my cue from my son who cried out in the darkness decades ago and, now grown, creates great journeys of his own. He has made it his business to be an expert on helping his clients make the most of their personal aspirations by teaching them to harness and capitalize on their dreams. He points out that, “Curiosity is a compass that ensures you enjoy the journey whether or not you reach the intended destination.”

My theme for renewal in 2016 is curiosity: childlike, free flowing, and encouraging. I have assembled a wide-ranging list of subjects and experiences that I am curious about. Subjects I plan to mine for insight a month at a time. That is my simple strategy. My 2016 impetus to creativity.

Curiosity is, in the final analysis, the only frontier. Other frontiers flow from that original, innate, bright borderline between knowledge/experience and ignorance. Curiosity sweetens existence, burns boredom to fertile ash, transforms work into play, and makes every moment rich with possibilities.

 

THE ENDLESS GRIP

/ L. Jean Snow VanOrden / Leave a comment

Certainly you have experienced this feeling. If you are human, if you are equipped with a searching and hungry ego (and even if you think you aren’t– but then you’d be lying to yourself). Surely, if you have lived in society and not in a monastery your whole life, you have been discomfited in this way. An irritating seed of ambition niggles at your psyche like a raspberry pip in your teeth which your tongue can’t leave alone. This sprouting ambition, nebulous, nameless at first, doesn’t have a specific target, just the desire to achieve something not just remarkable but unlikely. Spurning more natural, inborn talents, this naive seed of ego casts about for a more remote even impossible option for greatness: an Everest, an Olympic Medal, or perhaps just breaking 100 in the game of golf.

In the summer of 2008, after a battle with cancer, as I labored to regain my physical strength, and vent the fighting spirit that cancer engenders, my husband, Ralph, took me golfing at Palmer Golf Course, Palmer Alaska. Strangely, in spite of the briefest of seasons for lush fairways and velvet putting greens, golf is a highly popular pastime in Alaska. According to the sales person who ushered me through the aisles of tees, gloves, hats, and golf shoes one Saturday, the Sports Authority in Anchorage is one of the chain’s highest sellers of golf equipment. With the long summer hours of daylight, Alaskans have the luxury of tee times well into the evening hours.

In pictures of those first few rounds, I look gaunt, slightly hunched over, a bundle of skin and bones sitting in the golf cart pretty much just along for the ride. As the summer progressed, the game got into my blood along with the strength to walk a full 18 holes. I would describe myself as a singer, a dancer, an artist, not the athletic type. But that all changed that year as I plowed my way through round after round at 14 strokes (or more) per hole.

I didn’t suspect the transformation that golf would ultimately demand. This is not just a sport. It is a mental breakdown in slow motion, round after round. The seed of my golfing ambition planted itself firmly as I looked forward with enthusiasm to punishing myself mercilessly on the course along the banks of the Matanuska River. Thorny emotions got tangled with the mechanics of the swing. Prickly weeds of confusion ran riot over the tender skills of chipping, putting, and keeping track of way too many strokes. My voice, made husky by radiation, succumbed to fertile expletives which had never before passed my lips. But given one terrific drive and a handful of well-struck putts and the strangling vines of frustration dropped away. I would leave the course happy and hopeful.

In the summer of 2011, my husband signed us up to play in a Cancer Society fundraiser best-ball tournament. This was a graduation day of sorts for me. I was healthier and stronger. The florid scars of cancer treatment had faded. The energy of my cancer battle had fully transferred to my improbable crusade to golf well. I am not competitive. I am profoundly self-conscious. I prefer not to have anyone see my pitiful golfing skills. Nevertheless, there I was playing in a tournament with veteran seekers of par. Ralph and I arrived at our shotgun starting hole before any other teams. I stanched my fear of being watched by jumping to the tee first. I planted my feet solidly and hit the ball with a satisfying ping. A well-timed rush of adrenaline sent my drive sailing high, straight, and long right down the middle of the fairway into the face of Pioneer Peak. My husband’s drive duck-hooked into the woods along the river. The other two men on our team sliced their drives into a grove of birch and highbush cranberry. My drive was the best ball. I marched proudly down the fairway to hit my second shot. I was captivated. I was also completely ignorant of the fact that my progress in the game up to that point was an illusion; a combination of tenacious will and pure naive luck.

In 2012, we moved to the Boise, Idaho area which is blessed with a wide array of golf courses from the mediocre to the deluxe. We bought a pass to River Birch Golf Course, a friendly and mildly challenging course with wide fairways and refreshing views. With the encouragement of our real estate agent, I joined the Boise chapter of the Executive Women’s Golf Association. At the opening chapter event of the 2013 season, the veil of my Alaskan golfing experience was stripped from my eyes. These women could really golf. They outdistanced my childish strokes by dozens of yards. I was in way over my head. By the end of that summer season, I was both frustrated to the point of nervous exhaustion, and still, even more serious about the game. Golf is a game of inches, not yards; of delicate body placement, not just crudely wrangled clubhead speed. Both the mechanics and the mindset require a humble assessment of things you thought you knew, and things you never supposed about who you are.

I dragged out every back issue of Golf magazine we owned and studied like a freshman hungry to get on the dean’s list. I developed a taste for viewing golf tournaments on television, which my childhood self would have found stupefyingly boring. I jealously examined the techniques of my fellow players. I drooled as I watched 11-year-old, 100 pound, Lucy Li’s 250-yard drives. It finally dawned on my brain, clear as the sunrise over the ball choked ponds at River Birch Golf Course: the golf swing is not about thousands of infinitesimal golf tips and the minutiae of equipment specs.

The golf swing is raw physics. The right movement of the body, in the right space, with the right rhythm, at the right pace. Grasp that firmly first.  Only then can you manage to keep the physics clean AND increase clubhead speed with the whipping action of the club. Swing with your body, not your arms. My mind was blown. Everything I had been doing to improve my game was all wrong. Just a random set of categorically unrepeatable actions.

My epiphany about the physics of the golf swing focused my attention on the science behind how my body should move. However, my mental state was as out of sync as my motions. I was too tightly wound. My heart raced. My thoughts shot about wildly resembling the wayward hooks, and slices of a crowded driving range. My hands gripped the club like it was the edge of a capsizing canoe sinking in a deep water hazard. I would run from ball position to ball position as if an Alaskan grizzly was chasing me. Quite simply my head was not in the game.

A bit of luck gave me the opportunity to attend a seminar on irons by a well known Boise golf pro. This man is the embodiment of ease and grace. He languidly moves through the golf swing with relaxed focus. His first instruction:  make no exclamations of dismay for bad hits and applaud every good one. His second instruction: never go out on the driving range and feverishly hit ball after ball after ball getting more and wound up and out of breath with every stroke. He encouraged hitting four or five balls, then stepping back to rest, slow down, and establish peace of mind.

The swing is physics, the mindset is calm. The pros don’t jog from position to position as if they are in a race with their opponent. They saunter. When tempers flare, they quickly shake off their nerves and irritations or they lose. The LPGA pros are even more collected.

No more racing, no more ranting, no more unwelcome worries on the course. Play one stroke at a time with full attention. This is the ultimate triumph of my crusade to break 100. I am fascinated by the physics of golf, but more importantly, the game has changed my inner life. I am learning to saunter, to slow my heart, to shake off anxieties, to move away from my ego. My golf ambition propelled me into a new phase of self-discovery: the peace of mindfulness, the endless grip of now.

 

 

Launched: 2015 A New Year Odyssey

/ L. Jean Snow VanOrden / 2 Comments

“We’re still pioneers, we’ve barely begun. Our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us,

cause our destiny lies above.”

Cooper to his father in the movie Interstellar

earth_1-jpg

Imagine hitching a ride on the Rosetta spacecraft as it sped into the darkness of space in March of 2004 for a ten-year flight to rendezvous in 2014 with comet 67P/C-G. (http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov/).

First, you’re  launched along  a  trajectory  of visual splendor following the cloud veiled, blue-green face of Earth for  a year-long orbit around the sun.  From there, a gravity assist flings you into a close flyby of ruddy and hopeful Mars, laced with tantalizing signs of alien mysteries and microscopic ancient life. The miracles of astrophysics slingshot you to the asteroid belt, back to earth, and to the belt again. You have traveled to the furthest reaches of the solar system, nearly a billion kilometers from the sun, its warmth and light growing so dim that for a time Rosetta shuts down all but the most essential functions to conserve energy.

Finally, in November of 2014,  you watch the first ever landing on a comet as Rosetta’s robot lander, the Philae, alights on the surface. Comets have both terrified and fascinated humankind for millennia, and now, humans have a presence on one of those comets and can closely monitor its fiery transformation as it approaches the sun. Pictures are taken, analysis of the comet’s composition and other data are transmitted and jubilantly welcomed by knowledge hungry scientists back on earth.

At the end of its mission, Rosetta  will usher the comet to  its closest pass of the sun, termed perihelion. Then, the lonely wanderer will have fulfilled it’s purpose: mission accomplished, mission terminated. And you need a ride back to earth.

Round-trip passage on Rosetta is not possible, but we have launched into a new year and quite literally another odyssey around the sun; through space and time we embark on Mission 2015

Ever since my teacher,  Mrs. Hawkins, read A Wrinkle In Time to my fifth-grade class, I have dreamed of space travel, of vaulting the limits of the known  in order to visit other worlds.  Madeleine L’Engle’s book is wrapped in wonder, and filled with starlight, alien creatures, and mind-bending  tesseract spacetime travel. Ideas  like these still propel my hopes and fuel my imagination, sending me to the theater nearly every time a real science fiction film is released.

“Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.” (A Wrinkle in Time)

In the spirit of the movie Interstellar, I fire up the imagination of  childhood  to make plans for 2015. With such imaginings, plans become journeys and shirk the mundane. For this year’s journey I have decided to work at seeing things differently, adopting an active spirit of inquiry.  I’m searching for a more evocative approach to the fresh slate of time and space awaiting me on  this journey across 2015.

We are literally hurtling through space.  Vast amounts of  data bombard  us every single moment, second, nanosecond. This sensory overload pulls at us like the gravity of a neutron star, inescapable,  though we manage not to let it consume us.  Every day there are limitless options, but always a limited amount of time. The closer we get to that neutron star, the singularity of too much information for the mind to handle, the faster our time leaks away like oxygen through a growing pin prick in a  space suit. Thus the need for balance, a delicate orbit where the sensory data can be observed and understood without becoming our destruction.

At NASA everything is planned down to the fractions of each second in order to accomplish highly technical and highly refined projects. Mission control is all about engineering the perfect plan and foreseeing all the variables;  with hope directing every second, every motion, every calculation.

The demands of my own personal “astronaut training” here on spaceship Earth have been daunting: physically, mentally, and spiritually. It’s daunting for all of us.  At times I’ve been tempted to cut loose and simply drift, foregoing any hint of NASA like planning of my life.  But I can no more choose not to act with intention than I can choose not to breathe. Choosing to drift would still be a choice with consequences.

I shouldn’t and indeed cannot tighten  up control of my life  with NASA-style precision ;  but there should be and will be planning.  In 2015, I am taking inspiration from the beauty and brilliance of the cosmos, respecting the organic flow of my  life in a fashion similarly to the astronaut’s and astrophysicist’s, the engineer’s and mission control specialist’s respect and reverence spaceflight and exploration.

My Mission Control for 2015:

Silence: I will give my mind and body more restful, rejuvenating, silence.  Silent time away from noise, data, conversation.  Even time silencing my thoughts. Think of the silence in the vast spaces between the stars.

Slow Down:  I am going to slow down: move slower, think slower,  find calm, use the pause and the breath. Think of motion in the absence of gravity: graceful, flowing, floating.

Move with intention:  Too often instead of controlling my life, life controls me.  Whatever is in my face gets my attention and action.  I will take a lesson from the finely tuned precision of a NASA flight plan,  paying more heed  to  intentions and priorities, doing what is most important  now,  for love of and commitments to myself and others. If I’m always swept up by that immediate impulse to take care of what’s in my face seizing my attention, all that’s being satisfied is that impulse, and not the plans and intentions built from a place of desire and caring.

Mindfulness: Certainly a ten year journey to the asteroid belt would give an astronaut plenty of time to meditate, contemplate the wonders of the universe, and gain greater self-awareness.  My hope is that by tending to a few key practices, I can create a similar, albeit less isolated space for greater mindfulness in hopes to cultivate an atmosphere of contentment in mind, heart and body.

My mission Statement for 2015.  

It may not give me the ability  to tesseract my way to far off solar systems, but hopefully exploring  my own soul creatively using the imagery spaceflight will foster travels in inner space as  awe inspiring as the splendors of the universe.


“Well, the fifth dimension’s a tesseract. You add that to the other four dimensions and you can travel through space without having to go the long way around. In other words, to put it into Euclid, or old-fashioned plane geometry, a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.”  A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle