Be the change you seek in the world

I think about the sacralization of time as I enter the garden this morning. In order to make my time there special and specific, I set a minute minder for 40 minutes. Yesterday, I set it for 50 minutes and then extended it 20 minutes more. I don’t have as much time as yesterday, and while there is always more to do, simply getting the vegetables picked, plus a little bit of weed management is enough for today.

As I set the timer into my harvest basket, I think of the action of marking time like saying grace before a meal: it is an action that deliberately ensures that one moment, or one activity, doesn’t just slip into the next.

I notice that I am beginning to get to know myself in a friendly sort of way. Understanding that I can be a bit focused on task, as well as a little absent-minded, I take an action that will ensure that I will not leave the timer behind on the fencepost. It’s a new perspective, this being helpful to myself, honoring my foibles and taking the care that I will accomplish what I think that ought to, without ragging on myself for, well, being me.

I have always like Eric Anderson's song "you have to be your own best friend" and I am understanding a bit more what it might actually mean.

The Rev. Dr. Susan Richtie told stories this past week at the Unitarian Universalist Leadership Training Institute of 19th century Universalist women who accomplished an amazing amount of social change because they were able to use their position as non-threatening upper class women. They got bar owners to allow them to hold church services in their establishments on Sunday mornings, the one time there were no patrons there, even as they worked and preached temperance. For them, temperance was not about the evils of being intoxicated, it was about the very real reality of a man spending all of his paycheck on liquor and then not being able to financially support his family.

The stories that we tell ourselves, the language that we use in the privacy of our own minds, very much reflects the way we move within our world. And if we think that the world might be lovelier if it was a little kinder or gentler, I’m learning that I can start with how I treat myself.

The vegetables are picked, the timer is back on its shelf in the kitchen, and I hope that your day is going as well.