Restoring Serenity to Your Daily Endeavors - March

Quotes from Simple Abundance: 365 Days to a Balanced and Joyful Life by Sarah Ban Breathnach

"March arrives, the last hurrah of winter and the first whisper of spring.  Slowly our spirits reawaken, along with the natural world, from a long winter's slumber.  Branches that just days ago were bare now blossom with new growth.  Deep within we feel stirrings of hope.  Turn over the earth in the inner garden.  This month we plant the seeds of the second Simple Abundance Grace--Simplicity--in the fertile soil of our souls."

Day 61:  Restoring Serenity to Your Daily Endeavors

"We can dramatically change the quality of our lives when we consciously seek to restore Simplicity's gift of serenity to our daily endeavors.  How exactly can this be accomplished in our lifetime?....If you frequently feel as if you're about to spin off this planet, it's probably because you are.  I know a woman who will begin to brush her teeth only to start making her bed while she is still foaming at the mouth.  And why?  Because from the corner of her eye she saw the rumpled sheets.  Before she could rinse, she had flung herself into the next task.  Needless to say, a day that starts off this frenzied can only go from bad to worse."

"Serene women do not become sidetracked.  Sidetracked women who scatter their energies to the four winds never achieve serenity.  Nervous breakdowns, to be sure, but not serenity.  It's as simple as that."

"So here's the plan:  Concentrate slowly on completing one task at a time, each hour of the day, until the day is over.  We will act 'as if' we are serene by bringing all our attention and awareness to whatever we are doing--from brushing our teeth to putting the children to bed.  What we will gain from this exercise is the inner peace that comes from living fully in the present moment...,I assure you that you will accomplish all you set out to do with much more ease, efficiency, pleasure, and satisfaction when you merge mind, body, and spirit with the task at hand.  And surprise!--you will experience serenity."

Sarah must have peaked into my bathroom because this is something I have literally done--make my bed while my toothbrush is still in my mouth!  There are other things I interrupt myself to do.  Perhaps it's because raising children does this to us.  They interrupt all the time and now I have my puppy who does the same thing.  Is there hope for me?

Day 62:  Meditation:  Many Paths to the Present Moment

One of my stick piles

"Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing about who that is.  It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely the path that is your life."  --Jon Kabat-Zinn, American Professor Emeritus of Medicine and author

"There are many ways of meditating.  Dr. Joan Borysenko, the gifted and inspired psychologist, scientist, and spiritual teacher, explains that meditation is intentional concentration on one thing, which can be either secular or spiritual.  'Perhaps you have become so absorbed in gardening, reading or even balancing your checkbook that your breathing slowed, and you became as single-pointed as a panther stalking her dinner!  In this state creativity flowers, intuition leads to a deeper wisdom, the natural healing system of the body is engaged, our best physical and mental potential manifests itself and we feel psychologically satisfied,' she writes.  Spiritual meditation, on the other hand, 'will help you become aware of the presence of the divine in nature, in yourself and in other people.'"

"There are many paths to the present moment, but it begins with concentrating on and finishing one task at a time....Any time we are fully present in the moment we are meditating.....Today, retreat to a quiet place where you can sit or even lie down in a comfortable position so that you can relax your body.  Now close your eyes and let your breathing become slow and steady.  Get in touch with the silence within."

I have kiddingly said my meditation time is when I pick up sticks on our property.  But now I see that it really is meditation.  As I look for sticks that are large enough to be dangerous if one of my grandchildren were to step and fall on or those the lawnmower will chew up and make twice as many to pick up, I often find my mind clearing and my thoughts being clarified.  It gets me outside into nature where the fresh air and sounds of birds engage my senses. This probably is what knitting does for those who have that skill and why adult coloring books have become so popular.  These are all tasks you can do while freeing your mind to concentrate on something else. 

Day 63:  Setting Aside a Personal Sabbath

Emily Dickinson's home and garden

"It was all right for the Great Creator to rest on the seventh day, but many contemporary women assume they just can't take the time off.  After all, we're not creating the world six days a week, just carrying its weight on our shoulders.  'Some keep the Sabbath going to Church,' Emily Dickinson confided.  'I keep it staying at Home.'"

"This is what the Sabbath is for:  reverence, rest, renewal, rejuvenation, reassuring rituals, recreation, rejoicing, revelation, remembering how much you have to be grateful for, and saying 'thank you!'....What matters is that you do something different that speaks to your soul and refreshes your body and mind on whatever day you decide to take a personal Sabbath.  I like to think of the Sabbath as a spiritual sanctioned 'time out' so that we can just have a few hours of relaxation regardless of our personal faith.  Your activities on the Sabbath should uplift you and provide enough inspiration to sustain you during the week to come."

Blue laws ended in my state in 1987.  For those who may be too young to know what a Blue Law was it was the law that "kept the Sabbath" by requiring most stores to close.  Once stores stayed open all week Sundays no longer felt laid back. Taking a Sunday drive meant battling traffic.  I resisted for years, refusing to go shopping even though others in my family did.  Eventually, though, I succumbed to running errands on a Sunday afternoon if I hadn't gotten around to them the week before.  Now that I'm retired as a mom I can take Sabbath time anytime I want.  But I still like the idea of setting aside time to make sure I use that time in a restorative way.  I like Sarah's list of "Rs" as a way to do this.

Day 64:  Priming the Pump for Inspiration

"The well of Providence is deep.  It's the buckets we bring to it that are small." --Mary Webb (1881-1927) English romantic novelist and poet

"My writing ritual is what I refer to as 'priming the pump for inspiration.'  When you must pump water from a well the old-fashioned way, by hand, you need to pour a pitcher of water down the pump to get it going.  I prime my personal pump in a very particular way because the repetitiveness of the process activates the right side of my brain where creativity dwells....The instantly recognizable ritual informs my brain that we're now working, picking up from where we left off yesterday."

"You need to create a reassuring ritual for yourself to access your inner reservoir--that place deep within you inhabited by imagination....This week consider the importance of creating a special way to prime your personal pump."

Looking back at my creative writing times I'd say my ritual was to bring my coffee back to bed, get out my journal, and take notes on the devotionals I read.  From there I'd pull out my notebook where I wrote my stories.  My imagination had been primed by reaching deep into my inner self.  I'd reread what I'd written the day before and would find the story continuing on its own.  It was as though I was reading, rather than writing, what came next.  

Unfortunately, my well has seemed to have dried up in the past few years.  Perhaps it only needs priming....

Day 65:  The Thrill of Thrift

First Nature.com

"I don't know a woman alive who doesn't get a thrill out of thrifting--finding the perfect item at the perfect price....But to truly understand the reassuring and redeeming spiritual qualities of thrift and how it balances our daily round, let's clear away all the old, hackneyed cobwebs that surround this marvelous quality.  Let's begin with what thrift isn't:  parsimonious, frugal, mean scrimping, paltry, shoddy, stingy, or cheap.  What thrift is:  bountiful, generous, compassionate, vigorous, growing, abundant, blooming, copious, healthful, efficient.  Thrift is practicing the art of elegant economies, such as Gratitude, Simplicity, Order, Harmony, Beauty, and Joy (interestingly, all the six Grace of Simple Abundance).  Thrift is thriving, increasing, expanding, and plentiful.  Through the artisanal craft of thrift, we become balanced in all areas of our lives....Probably the earliest meaning of the word thrift was 'the condition of one who thrives' or being endowed with good luck, good fortune, wealth, and health.  But what made thrift such an honorable aspiration was that its bounty was not conveyed by celestial benediction or favor of the crown--but rather through the everyday choices made by prudent housewives who were neat, clean, industrious, imaginative, honest, clever, enterprising, and generous.  Women who found the mystical in the mundane rituals of their daily round and cherished the bounty of their everyday."

"Intriguingly, thrift is also the name of a charming English flower, a pink perennial that blooms from April through September and flourishes in rock crevices, requiring little soil for sustenance while acting as a barrier to protect marshes from the ebb-and-flow erosion of the sea.  As a metaphor for our own goal of balanced and joyful lives, the meta-physical boundary of thrift protects us from the ebb and flow of emergencies.  It enables us to create our own protective barrier to cushion us from want and distress through our savings, or what the Victorians called the 'Margin of Happiness.'...In Phyllis McGinley's inspirational essay 'The Pleasures of Thrift,' she describes how passionate thrift is the guardian of domestic bliss:  'Meanness inherits a set of silverware and keeps it in the bank.  Economy uses it only on important occasions for fear of loss.  Thrift sets the table with it every night for pure pleasure but counts the butter spreaders before they are put away.'...What I adore about McGinley's view of thrift is that 'it has to be a personal joy' that every woman must work out for herself.  First, what are your authentic extravagances?....'Every woman has to learn to be thrifty in her own idiom.  Her economies must be like her luxuries cut to the shape of the family budget or the family dream and they must never descend to indignities.' ....I believe that once we approach thrift not as a straitjacket of 'can't haves' but as a homegrown remedy for contentment and creativity, this ancient art can boost our morale, and increase our 'Margin of Happiness,' and that, after all is why we seek the sacred in the ordinary."

As a young mother and wife I loved the challenge of keeping my household running smoothly, whether it was keeping schedules, routines, and activities for the children or household duties and finances in check.  I often shopped yard sales and thrift stores in order to provide my family what we needed within our means.  I still look for bargains which gives us that cushion to spend freely on things we couldn't afford before.  I love Sarah's comparison to the Thrift flower.  I will have to plant them in my garden!

Day 66:  The Margin of Happiness

Our first house and second car

"The Margin of Happiness was the euphemism Victorian literary domestics--women columnists who wrote about achieving domestic bliss--used when referring to the household budget.  As Charles Dickens points out in his novel David Copperfield--published in 1849 and based on his father's stint in debtor's prison during Dickens's childhood--the difference in life between happiness and misery can be as little as six shillings of overspending.  Because overspending rarely stops at six shillings, which was then about seventy-two cents!  I think creating a 'happy margin' in our financial affairs is a splendid way for us to reframe the concept of personal budgets."

'The word 'budget' seems to frighten some people.  They think of it as a beast which will devour, or as a tool by which the homemakers arbitrarily, almost automatically cut themselves off from all possibility of ever obtaining the things they want,' the home arts magazine Modern Priscilla told readers in January 1928.  'On the contrary, it does, if well-made and well used, prevent careless experience for things outside the scheme of life.  It prevents wandering thoughtlessly into debt.  It ensures the purchase of many things which, however desirable, would have been counted among the impossibilities or extravagance, if the careful survey demanded in making the budget had not shown them to be possible.'  While budgets sound punitive, a Margin of Happiness account is a promising and wonderful introduction to the joys of delayed gratification.  You'll feel differently about personal budgets if you believe you're an artist of the everyday, actively creating tangible happiness by deciding to allot a regular sum--however small in the beginning--to your Margin of Happiness."

Money can be a very sensitive subject to talk about.  For instance, it is not polite to ask someone how much they make or what they spent on something they bought.  And as Sarah points out using the word budget can send people running!  I remember one of my mother's axioms was might as well marry someone rich and be miserable than marry someone poor and miserable.  Thankfully, I never aspired to be rich--I just wanted to live within my means which for me often meant being thrifty.  I remember when we moved a little further out from Washington, DC I was happy because the malls here were anchored by Sears and Wards, not Macys and Nordstroms.  People dressed more like I could afford rather than expensive chic.  I was able to be more content with my tight budget.  So I like how Sarah encourages us to evaluate what's important to us beyond our basic needs and to put a bit away every month towards it.  An example of this was that I wanted to have a house and a second car before we had children.  So we lived on my husband's income alone and saved mine toward buying that house and car.  It meant we did not live like typical childless couples.  Our vacations were mainly visiting relatives, we did not go out to eat, I even cut my own hair and my husband's.  And because we were used to living on one income I was able to quit work when our family started coming along.  You really don't need much more if your mortgage payments can be made on one income and when you consider you don't have to pay for childcare, special clothing for work, or for services you don't have time to do yourself.  Cooking rather than going out or ordering in also saves a great deal of money. The Internet has lots of sites on how to live on less so that you have something to put in your Margin of Happiness.

Day 67:  Outfitting a Comfort Drawer

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."  --Neale Donald Walsch, American inspirational author

"Life requires that we prepare ourselves for the inevitable times that try our souls, particularly on those days when we push past our comfort zone in pursuit of our Authentic Self.  After tough days, when I want to pull the covers over my head and never come out again, I've discovered that when worn to a raveling my comfort drawer is a lovely prescription for frazzled hearts and minds."

Sarah's comfort drawer consists of the following:  a box of chocolate truffles; miniature (one-serving size) fruit cordials and after-dinner drinks; an aromatherapy bath treatment to promote serenity; assorted new-to-me cozy mystery novels; a small vial of Bach's Rescue Remedy (a homeopathic essence available at health food stores); a velvet herbal sleeping pillow to induce pleasant dreams; a satin eye mask to shut out distractions; rose-scented bubble bath and talc; old love letters tied with a silk ribbon; a scrapbook of personal mementos; a tin of fancy biscuits; and an assorted gift sample of unusual teas.  It is quite a list!

I do not have a drawer per se.  My go-to stress relief, besides picking up sticks outside, is a hot epsom bath while listening to inspirational talks on YouTube on my iPhone.  But I like the idea of having a box, at least, with special notes from friends or photos of special times.  It wouldn't hurt to add some chocolate, too, though I don't know if the chocolate would still be there when I had one of the kind of days the Comfort Drawer is meant for.

What would you put in your Comfort Drawer?