When I was growing up, my siblings and I spent a lot of time outside. We had a swing set that we swung so hard on, the whole structure would rock. There were mums, irises, and day lilies along the back of the house, and steps leading from our back door that were, in my memory, big and wide and perfect for sitting on. As an older kid, I claimed a corner of the yard and planted flowers in front of a beautiful stand of ferns.
I loved the smell of the clean laundry on our clothesline. I was fascinated by the iridescent wings of the Japanese beetles that clung to the clothes and the crisp, starchy feeling of the laundry as it came off the line. For the many sunny days when the clothes dried uninterrupted, there was also the rush of adrenaline from pulling down clothes as the first drops of a rainstorm began to fall.
The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality, by Ronald Rolheiser, was the second of two books I read while going through RCIA this year.
RCIA is Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. It’s part of the process of joining the Catholic Church. I didn’t start the class intending the join the Catholic Church.
A friend from the retreat asked me if I’d been able to keep up my meditation practice while we were in Tobago.
The answer is yes, and no.
The first week, I read the fantastic Breathing Underwater. One of Rohr’s observations was that when you find positive practices for your life, you should find that you need less of them over time to get the benefit, not more.
For a while now, it had felt that the law of level of diminishing returns was starting to apply to my meditation, yet I was afraid to scale back and lose ground. In the weeks before our trip, I’d gone from an hour and a half to 2 hours a day down to about 1 – 1.5 hours. I’d been keeping up with an hour plus a day since we’d been on vacation, but was trying to figure out how Rohr’s idea applied to my practice.
After I finished The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben, I was glad to learn that the author had written two other books. The first one I got my hands on was The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion; Surprising Observations of a Hidden World.
By chapter three, I knew I wanted to read it to my kids, so I started it over as a read-aloud for them for school. I figured it would count both for Literature and Science, and I love extra credit.
I heard about Ayelet Waldman’s book A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life on Tami Simon’s podcast Insights At The Edge. It isn’t a podcast I normally listen to; it’s more aligned with the Chaplain’s interests. But when he saw an episode featuring an interview with Waldman, he sent it my way, knowing my interest in psychedelics and microdosing.
Since I started this journey, I’ve felt like I didn’t want to spend my time defending my interest in and use of psychedelics, not in person or on my blog. But recently, I was expressing frustration with the Chaplain about the way anti-drug groups are still spreading false information about psychedelics, the safety of certain drugs, and grouping drugs like psilocybin in with heroine and opioids.
