Thoughts: Closer to the heart…
Thoughts: Alive in this moment, with Thay
“We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available.
“We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living.
“We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.
“Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Thoughts: Probably my favourite fable in the world…good? bad? who knows?
I’ve heard this story in several places, most notably as told by Dan Millman, Derek Sivers, and others. I feel it’s a nice cautionary tale about celebrating too early, before we know how the whole story is going to turn out, or getting down because we think we’re losing in the game. Either way, wait & see.
What do you think, dear heart?
An old man and his son worked a small farm, with only one horse to pull the plow. One day, the horse ran away.
“How terrible,” sympathized the neighbors. “What bad luck.”
“Who knows whether it is bad luck or good luck?” the farmer replied.
A week later, the horse returned from the mountains, leading five wild mares into the barn.
“What wonderful luck!” said the neighbors.
“Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?” answered the old man.
The next day, the son, trying to tame one of the horses, fell and broke his leg.
“How terrible. What bad luck!”
“Bad luck? Good luck?”
The army came to all the farms to take the young men for war, but the farmer’s son was of no use to them, so he was spared.
“Good? Bad?”
Thoughts: How about a hundred dollar Christmas?
I hope the season finds you well & good, and that you’re making plans to be close to friends & family & loved ones. My little gift to you: I’d like to offer what I think is a pretty reasonable suggestion: Don’t go broke this holiday season.
For the past several years (back into the nineties, at least), my family & I have enjoyed a hundred dollar Christmas – spending no more than that. Does that mean no presents?
Hardly! It means homemade candles (one year), specially burnt CDs, certificates for babysitting, log-splitting and other “chores,” home-cooked banana bread, homemade calendars…great fun.
I just noticed how many times I said “home.”
Anyway, I’ve posted this before, but I’d like to offer this essay by Bill McKibben once more as an articulate explanation of this notion – see what you think, then see what you do:
+++++++++++++++
A Hundred Dollar Christmas
A small revolt takes hold in the author’s New England hometown.
By Bill McKibben
from the November/December 1997 Issue of Mother Jones
You CAN spend less, ya know….keep it simple. 
I know what I’ll be doing on Christmas Eve. My wife, my 4-year-old daughter, my dad, my brother, and I will snowshoe out into the woods in late afternoon, ready to choose a hemlock or a balsam fir and saw it down — I’ve had my eye on three or four likely candidates all year.
We’ll bring it home, shake off the snow, decorate it, and then head for church, where the Sunday school class I help teach will gamely perform this year’s pageant. (Last year, along with the usual shepherds and wise people, it featured a lost star talking on a cell phone.) And then it’s home to hang stockings, stoke the fire, and off to bed. As traditional as it gets, except that there’s no sprawling pile of presents under the tree.
Several years ago, a few of us in the northern New York and Vermont conference of the United Methodist Church started a campaign for what we called “Hundred Dollar Holidays.” The church leadership voted to urge parishioners not to spend more than $100 per family on presents, to rely instead on simple homemade gifts and on presents of services — a back rub, stacking a cord of firewood. That first year I made walking sticks for everyone. Last year I made spicy chicken sausage. My mother has embraced the idea by making calendars illustrated with snapshots she’s taken.
The $100 figure was a useful anchor against the constant seductions of the advertisers, a way to explain to children why they weren’t getting everything on their list.
So far, our daughter, Sophie, does fine at Christmas. Her stocking is exciting to her; the tree is exciting; skating on the pond is exciting. It’s worth mentioning, however, that we don’t have a television, so she may not understand the degree of her impoverishment.
About Brother Ian
Over the centuries, Brother Ian has been collecting stories & information & discourses for the purpose of elevating the human condition as needed, dissecting it when necessary, and building the case for hope.
In the spirit of noting that organized crime, organized baseball, organized labour, and organized religion tend to engender controversy & occasional discord, I promise to be neither organized or critical of those who are.