I had the honor of knowing Marlin Smith Perkins and yes, I can say, she was my friend. In fact, she was everyone’s friend.

At the service earlier this week honoring her life, the poem below was in the program noted as one of her favorite readings. You may have seen it as it’s been circling the internet since 1999 as a plea (and hoax) from a (fictitious) dying girl. In fact, the poem is real, written more than 20 years ago by David L. Weatherford, a child psychologist from Tennessee.

Whatever the origin, for Marlin the message rang so true that her friends and family knew how important it was to her. In fact, it was how she lived her life.

Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music before the song is over.

I can not change all those lost moments with my family or my friends but I can change how I move forward. What better reason do you need to Stop, Look, Listen and Just Breathe?

Slow Dance

Have you ever watched kids on a merry-go-round?

Or listened to the rain slapping on the ground

Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight?

Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?

You better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last.

Do you run through each day on the fly?

When you ask, “How are you?” Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done do you lie in your bed with the next hundred chores running though your head?

You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last.

Ever told your child, “We’ll do it tomorrow”? And in your haste, not seen the sorrow?

Ever lost touch, let a good friendship die ‘cause you never had time to call and say, “Hi”?

You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere, you miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift…thrown away.

Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music before the song is over.

I had the pleasure and honor to participate in a silent retreat last weekend. Yes, silent. Yes, last weekend i.e. 48+ hours! One of my yoga teachers organized a retreat and boy was it a retreat in every sense of the word.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of retreat includes: the forced or strategic withdrawl of an army, the act of withdrawing (as into safety or privacy, retirement or seclusion), a place of refuge, seclusion or privacy, a period of retirement for prayer, meditation or study.

The weekend was everything and more than the definition. Even “withdrawl of an army” applied to me. An army of chores, of projects, of “shoulds”.

When was the last time you had no caffeine, no cell phone, no computer, no TV, no food, no talking, no music, no books, no clocks for 48 hours? Believe me, it was a first for me on most every count.

So what do you do when you have no distractions to keep you running around all day? Yoga, breath work, meditation, writing, walking and a de-toxing juice fast with the most amazing array of fruits and vegetables.

The weekend was an opportunity to become aware of thoughts and feelings, to observe them and to even accept them. It was an opportunity to be still, to stop, to look, to listen, to give thanks.

The Am Kolel Retreat Center and Sanctuary in Bealesville MD is an old farm house with a labyrinth, acres of gardens, hiking trails and benches and chairs scattered inside and out to take pause. It was a perfect setting for a withdrawl of the senses (pratyahara).

What’s the takeaway from what must seem to some as total torture? Silence (and stillness) really is golden – a precious time that doesn’t need to be filled with idle chit chat and busyness.

The weekend was exhausting and exhilarating but more than anything the weekend reinforced my belief that carving out even 10 minutes of your day for quiet time for breath work or meditation may be the best thing you can do for your health and your mood.

I’ve never written a book review and I haven’t read any reviews of this book.

I am simply writing from the heart. If you are a multi tasker, if you have too many “shoulds” in your life, if you ever doubt yourself then give yourself the gift of this book.

Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World by Mary Pipher (2009).

I knew Mary Pipher as the Midwestern psychotherapist and well known and in demand author of 1990’s best sellers, Reviving Ophelia and The Shelter of Each Other. I still remember her writing about the importance of sitting down to family dinner without the distractions of TV (this was long before cell phones and texting) no matter how busy and over scheduled you are. What I didn’t know is that she dropped off the radar for years after running in to a brick wall.

I would be surprised if you don’t find something of yourself on almost every page of this memoir.

We are all so hard on ourselves. We are all so over scheduled and spread too thin. We are all regretting something we did and worrying about what we need to do next. If you still don’t get it about the importance of being “fully present”, if you still haven’t made the time to have a regular meditation practice, this gem might help.

We are what we pay attention to. Sadly, most of the time we are not attending to the world or ourselves. Psychologists estimate we have  60,000-70,000 thoughts a day, 99% of which are more or less what we thought yesterday. Our habits run our lives. Most of the time we are phoning it in. (p217)

Not all minutes are created equal and only a few become moments. We tend to greet every minute with demands such as: I want this. I don’t want this. I want more of this. I want less of that. We have ideas about what our minutes should or should not be. We want sunshine or rain, quiet or company, work or rest.  We are such yearning organisms. Yet, there is a sense in which many of us are fighting for our lives. We are struggling to be present for our own experiences. (p212)

Do you want to rush past Joshua Bell? (p212)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw

7 composition books, 1200 pages, 365 days. Today is the one year anniversary of my first date with The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

I had told myself so often that I’m left brained, that I don’t have a creative bone in my body that I had started to believe it. I began The Artist’s Way with the goal of completing the 12 week course in order to develop my right brain and to find something creative that I might enjoy and be good at.

Like many of us, I start things and don’t finish them. I give up too quickly. Even when you complete a goal, it’s all about the goal. You set it, start it, complete it, then what?

But I finished and after the 12 weeks I kept writing and writing.

The writing has become something I do, part of me and I am grateful for it.

The writing has brought excitement, creativity, this blog, a garden. It has carried me through joys and sorrows including a stressful senior year and a milestone birthday. It has helped me work thorough more problems than I care to count.

It has made me a better listener (to others and to myself). The ideas and inspiration for almost every blog I’ve written have come while writing these morning pages.  I’ve released a great deal of sorrow, anger and fear (still more to go) and there have been so many dots connected and “ah ha” moments.

The finest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself Of Solitude,  Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), French Renaissance essayist

7 compostition books, 1200 pages, 365 days, 525,600 minutes and still writing. If you haven’t listened to Seasons of Love from Rent for awhile, Enjoy.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8iTeDl_Wug

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. This life changing book is a 12 week self guided course on awakening or reawakening your creative self. Initially developed for “blocked” artists, this book is a must do for all us left brained folks. www.theartistsway.com