As I am meditated this morning, I was given the vision of range upon range of mountains, beyond one, more appearing. And l realized that I actually enjoy this metaphorical mountaineering. What I may have been seeing as problems are just the journey. And the idea that I will cease having problems as I mature into my older self is ridiculous. – a notion that I had been holding onto.

There is no end to the so-called problems of life; it is moving through them with a capacity of grace and assurance that this is my life’s purpose. There’s nothing wrong with where I am now, and there is no future of mine free of mountaineering.

So today I choose to embrace what is front of me: that is, after my respite by the fire of reading and meditating and reflecting a bit, having a shower, going to a job at a middle school where today I will be working with a group of young students with cognitive and physical delays and giving them a bit of love and patience while I ‘teach’ what is commonly called life skills. 

Then I’ll come home and walk my Moondog, maybe in the rain, maybe not, but any which way we will head to the beach, and I will fulfill this sacred obligation to myself, my dog, and to my Emily. I promised her I would find myself at the beach each day possible and spend some moments with her there, where I find I soak up her spirit best and where she sends me shells and stones and relentless waves and eagles and views that catch my throat with their beauty. There is always an ever-changing, rugged magnificence and comfort that I find there.

And then I’ll come home and alongside my sweetheart we will decide what we will eat, rummage through the fridge, confer a little, perhaps make another soup or roast some potatoes or pumpkin and choose our protein. And we will light our candle for Emily as we eat and listen to some music that Don will choose and will usually be exactly perfect and calming and beautiful or alternately energetic and uplifting. He always knows.

And then I’ll putter and do this and that, all toward some end of diurnal tasks, but that I can make holy through my attention to them; or maybe I’ll not do any of that, but just huddle in bed, plumped with pillows, watching some gentle TV show or reading with the gas fireplace so miraculously placed in our bedroom. What a gift that this girl who is always cold, this girl who loves her bed beyond all places, can be gifted a bedroom with not only a door, a portal to the stars outside and the owls in the backyard, and easy access for Moondog, but a fireplace that can provide all the ambience, all the warmth. And that,  if and when I want to, I can spend the greater part of my home hours right there in my sweet spot, even though this whole house, this whole property, nestled moments from the ocean is one great big bow-tied gift from the universe. 

I’ve also concluded that substitute teaching is also a kind of adventuring, also mountaineering. Every day the terrain is different. I don’t know what to expect, and where I will stop to make camp, and who I will meet. For many, this idea of substitute teaching is very stressful, and I thought it might be for me as well, but instead I find it exhilarating. It suits my personality of wanting adventure and newness, while also, at the end of the day, being able to sink into the comforts of home. It’s perfect. For now, it is perfect.

During my reflective time today, I asked Emily to help me shine my light especially warmly on those students who need it. I am not the one moving mountains right now. I am just climbing them, but I can provide those much needed sips of water, or a torch in the darkness, or a hand to hold when the climbing is hard. I ask that Emily show me to whom I can extend these graces today.