It's a good life.

It has been a minute since I had a minute to write something. April was an absolute doozy and May is following suit! I was in several cities for several reasons, which I imagine you know because of all my social media action.

In my Passion Planner (get one) this week, I wrote "deep breaths" as the focus.

Boy, was that prescient.

I've been moving so fast, I hardly noticed I wasn't taking time to breathe.

My parents visited this past weekend, and while most/many/some (?) people may say that's exhausting or overwhelming, I am #hashtagblessed to have parents whose presence is overwhelmingly positive and helpful. My mom and I got some more of my apartment organized (that's one of her specialties as far as mom powers go) and Daddy made excellent puns and continued J's cribbage education. We ate good food and drank good wine and laughed good laughs.

I feel like a lot of the pondering I do when I get to take deep breaths always comes around to "it's a good life." That's such a deep gratitude to arrive at on such a consistent basis.

I do work that I love (and continue to learn every day!) and have the world's best people a phone call away. My life has been, these last four months, nothing short of absurd. I haven't stepped back to see the truth nearly often enough.

This blog post is sort of all over the place (as is my brain), but I just wanted to put out into the universe once more that it's a good life. Things go nuts here and there (I'm never without anxiety) but it helps to know the underlying radness is still going strong.

Spinning Clumsiness into Sunshine

I fell off my bike again yesterday.

As a newly minted Davis bike commuter--hold your applause, it's a 3-mile round trip--I have been figuring out the details of gear shifting and hand signals and unabashed helmet-wearing (I am an OVERWHELMING minority).

I'm not proud of my ineptitude--shouldn't I be adult enough to stay upright on a bicycle?--but I'm not totally embarrassed of it, either. Failing at riding my bike some of the time means I'm succeeding at riding my bike the rest of the time--and the simple fact is, I'm riding my bike to work instead of driving my car, and that's saving me money on gas as well as adding cardio to an otherwise sedentary day.

And each morning/afternoon I've ridden through the park and down B Street to the Belfry, and each afternoon/evening I've ridden home, I've noticed that I'm smiling. I can't help it. The sun is shining (sometimes the moon) and it's been pretty warm either way and sometimes there's a nice breeze...and other people are riding their bikes, too, or walking their dogs or whatever. Somehow the small act of riding my bike to work spins an otherwise harried few minutes in the car into a carefree jaunt through a park.

At the LEVN retreat in February, we watched a TED talk about a mapping app that found alternative routes--not just fastest, but greenest, quietest, and happiest. It crowdsourced this data from beta users, who looked at photographs of the routes and tagged those photos with adjectives, positive and negative. The app only exists in Barcelona and London, but it changed the presenter's life. He said he'd been biking (which is already better but still wasn't good enough) down these main streets in London that took him the miles from his home to his office. One day, there were road closures or construction or something and so he made a quick turn and went up the next block, discovering that his entire route bordered a public park, and he'd never even seen it. It took a handful more minutes to go that route each day (the path is curved and/or indirect) but as far as happiness is concerned, it revolutionized the mood with which he traveled to and from work.

Though I've only been biking to work for two weeks, and have to drive some days because I'm schlepping a crock pot of soup, it has already changed the way I think about where I live. For every day I fall off my bike, there are several days on which I do not. The Casey of a few years ago would never have even considered riding her bike every day, and certainly wouldn't have believed she was capable. The Casey of yesterday is tempted to side with the Casey of a few years ago, given the bruise on her knee and ego. But the Casey of today rode her bike to work, anyway, somehow spinning clumsiness into sunshine.

Walking the labyrinth always reminds me of every other labyrinth I've walked. It will, of course, always bring HTLC to mind, since our journey was much longer than the labyrinth itself.

I remember a labyrinth at Yolijwa, and a cloth one in the Family Center at Bethlehem, and making one from masking tape on a retreat with BLCYM, and one at an RMS gathering, and the one CLU built after I graduated, and those "homework" labyrinths we walked in Denver...and then finally walking ours, just days before I left. How poignant was that?!

What I loved about this one at The Bishop's Ranch was how many views there were from each turn—perched on a hill in the Russian River Valley, one can see for miles between the evergreens. One space took my breath away. 

Between branches, a vineyard is visible, and beyond it, rolling green hills. What luck to be here in verdant February, when everything is beginning to flourish with rain and sun.

You never know where the labyrinth is going to lead you, but you're free to let it because there's only one path. You don't have to choose a road, so you're completely free to listen and watch. What a gift.