Productivity
😬
The week leading up to April 6 was a truly busy one. I finished my election research and dropped off my ballot, handled another bureaucratic snag with my medication, did my taxes, and worked 52 hours while my boss was on vacation. I can’t say I got through it all gracefully, and it’s not how I’d want to spend every week, but once again my routines pulled me through.
Current events
🤓
As usual, the election turned my attention to interesting local issues. I learned more about how our county is organized, read the dirt on local politics, and got distracted by nearby news I would normally ignore, like a best-selling author who wrote a suburban mystery novel inspired by his neighborhood walks during the pandemic. Almost all my chosen candidates ended up winning, so I guess I was in tune with the Zeitgeist around here.
Spirituality
🤔
In Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools Tyler Staton gave me food for thought on life’s trials. I can’t say it revolutionized my prayer life like I somehow hoped it would, but it did leave me with two key ideas: (1) Worship during hardship takes the form of defiant adoration, and (2) faithfulness to God in tragedy is a choice to accept and live in mystery. These ideas let me acknowledge difficulty without having to reconcile everything.
For my Friday fast, I read through the Stations of the Cross from St. Raphael Episcopal Church. As usual with liturgies, I couldn’t make total sense of the flow of thought, but my main takeaways were the need to go through suffering, the draw of joy on the other side, and even somehow joy in the pain itself. Similar to the Stations, an idea I tucked away for later was to read the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary (video).
Nature
😎
After dinner with my friend Tim on Saturday, we took a spontaneous walk in the woods. It had some atmosphere. We thought we heard coyotes.
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