Photo Credit: Eileen Melton
Convict Lake in the Sierra Nevada
At the end of a long day, when I was tempted to react not respond, a friend sent me a “ray of hope” picture and message: “Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.” (Ruth Gordon) The picture naturally was of nature, a picture of “Convict Lake” in Sierra Nevada. On a day when a betrayal of an ally momentarily led me to loose focus, not work on the garden or do silent reflection, this quote and picture grounded me again. As hard as men and woman may try to throw obstacles in one’s way, the beauty of creation, if you can only see it, shines. With courage and conviction we can see this beauty and not let ourselves be tempted by the negative. St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, says in a prayer in his “spiritual exercises”: “I deeply desire to be with you in accepting all wrongs and all rejections and all poverty…” (Spiritual Exercises #98) I have had a hard time understanding this desire but now see it as something Gandhi or Martin Luther King talked about — as a way to practice creative nonviolence. To “Be Not Afraid” takes real courage, the kind we can only find in the silence and beauty of nature.
Today I had lunch with a friend at the Amaranth Café, the best place in town for healthy and naturally good soup, salad and bread. As usual I met a new person there today, a friend of a friend who is an architect and was interested in our AIR concept of insulation. As usual I gave all around me the goat question: “Why is a goal warm in the cold” and as usual they all answered “hair” rather than the correct answer “air”. This reminds me of something else I need to tackle today but did not: my friend in Madison’s crunching of the numbers for our AIR experiments in the sunroom. God keeps giving me the answers to all my concerns and worries, the new friend in the café interested in use of air as insulation, the friend who sends me the picture of “Convict Lake”. But I need to be not afraid to listen. “The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.” (Bob Dylan)
Time: 11:39 p.m., Office Temp.: 65, Sunroom Temp. Average: 60, Outside Temp.: 28, KWH: 144.00
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