Time sure flies. When I last wrote the world (at least the one I live in) was brown, green, blue….. but today it is all white! Snow everywhere and it’s not even technically winter yet! If you like snow you can thank me. After about 7-8 years of pretty intense sled-dog training and preparation, this year I haven’t got around to hooking up the dogs even once. Snow has been so scarce these past few years, the kids have moved on to other ventures, I just kind of let it pass. The result – SNOW. The best early snow we’ve had in years. Thank me because I’m not prepared for it.

Which brings me to my point. I’ve done a lot of reflecting lately on my first year of my next career. And things happen so fast I seem to miss some of them. My Thanksgiving post addressed the “now”, the “Sacrament of the Present Moment” . Well, I was listening to my favorite philosopher the other day and found some simple words that can help focus on “now”:

I bought a cheap watch from the crazy man
Floating down Canal
It doesn’t use numbers or moving hands
It always just says “now”

Now you may be thinking that I was had
But this watch is never wrong
And if I had trouble the warranty said:
Breathe in, breathe out, move on

James Bu’ffett
(aka Jimmy Buffett on “Take the Weather With You”)

Everyone finds their spiritual inspiration in different places. I often get mine from music. So your spiritual exercise for today: take a minute, wherever you are right “now” and look for some simple spiritual inspiration. Something present, simple, available. The song on the radio, the view out the window, the view from your desk, the sound of your family, the silence of the snow. Take a minute, take now, “breath in, breath out, move on”

Take Care.

PS. Thanks to:http://songsinthekeyofwest.wordpress.com/2006/10/ The first googled site that I clicked on that gave me the words to the song.

So often we are the recipients of the phrase “Take Care” as a good-bye message. It’s a lot like, “See you later”, “How’s it going?” and “How are you?”. Those rhetorical questions and comments that we all say and hear but never really think about. Well, “care” is a word that has often made me stop and think, made me feel, a word that often touches my soul…..and not always in a positive way. One of my first “spiritual” experiences with the word came when someone told me “I realize you really don’t care, but would it kill you to act like you do?”. The reason that this statement had such a big impact was that I really did care. I evolved from that experience and was hit with “I realize that you really do care, but wold it kill you to show it to other people?”.

As I venture off into this new career of ministry, pastoral care and chaplain care are not only nice thoughts, but actually identifiable job responsibilities and duties. There are classes dedicated to professional “care-giving”. As I give this more thought (and this whole post is just coming off the cuff wihtout edits) The Comment “Take Care” isn’t something someone does for you, it is something you do for your self. And in our profession it is a critical job responsibility because if you don’t care for yourself you won’t have the resources to care for others…..and that’s what you are getting paid to do.

So I’m going to end the wandering with that thought since it’s time to get Sophie to her softball game. You will get more on this in the future, it is evolving as a critical idea in the retirement and transition training I’ve been doing. So, Take Care!