Bun: No chair too large

Plus fresh eggs

I know this chair is comfortable. Bun agrees! I think the chair suits her.

She has not tested our new dining area seating. That’s fine with me.

In the house, she stays low to the floor, where she’s likely to find an oatmeal snack.

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In chicken news, a few of the hens have decided to start laying again. Typically, they don’t lay during the darker months, so this is a welcome surprise. The pale blue green egg is from Whitey, the Ameraucana. She hadn’t laid an egg since last spring. Was she recovering until just now from the brutal heat of last summer? We will never know for sure.

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Midafternoon: The Wisdom Hour

I’m writing this at 3pm while I hurriedly scan my to-do list to see how much I can cross off. A different approach is to pause and reflect sans to-do list.

Taking the time to pause is usually challenging for me at any time of the day, more so in the midafternoon as I attempt to cram in as much as I can before I need to get on to the next obligation.

Dear friend Whitney shared with me the book Seven Sacred Pauses in which the author, Macrina Wiederkehr, provides a template for us to use the monastic themes of the hours in our modern lives. Wiederkehr calls midafternoon The Wisdom Hour. This hour’s themes are:

• steadfastness

• surrender

• forgiveness and wisdom

• impermanence

• aging

• maturing

• death and transition

This passage from the book shines a light on the importance of mindfulness in gaining insight.

In the midst of our work, then, we begin to live with an awareness that although, hopefully, what we are doing will be of service to the world, it is our being in the world that is the essence of all we do. Our doing flows out of our being and that is why it is necessary for us to learn to pause.