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New Beginnings

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Welcome to 2018!

In numerology, 2018 is an eleven year. Double numbers like eleven are called master numbers and are imbued with extra-special sauce.

One of the challenges of an eleven year is to step out of your comfort zone and share yourself with the world. Essentially, the year is inviting you and me to step into our brilliance and shine brightly for all to see.

Personally, I’d rather stay home and read a book, but that’s not what’s in the cards, stars, or numerology for this year. Instead, there’s magic afoot:

  • My life coaching business is ready for the world.
  • My poetry books (!) are almost ready, too.
  • Another secret recipe thing is a possiblity, too.
  • My Great Recipes Collection is live! If you loved the My Great Recipe posts, come visit and see your favorite recipes.

Each one of these is a huge undertaking. Frankly, it’s taken me more than a year to be ready to launch the coaching business.Along the way, I decided that it would be best to stop writing on WordStorm Casserole.

I am stunned and excited.

For months, I’ve struggled with the advantages and disadvantages of having two or more blogs. I really thought I would keep WordStorm for personal, and another for coaching thingies.

But I have learned to trust that still, inner voice that leads the way. And that voice -which I identify as spirit- moves in all sorts of mysterious ways. And ultimately, following that voice is what led me to be 100% OK with this move.

WordStorm Casserole will stay here for some time, but most likely will not be updated (or updated with announcement-type posts.)

It’s time for me to step out of my comfort zone, and shine my light. Please join me at JulieAWallace.com.

How will you start shining this year?

Top Posts of 2017

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As 2017 draws to a close, I thought we’d look at some of the top performing posts of 2017.

Top Traffic Posts

The following three posts consistently have the most visitors. For example, this old review of Boom! Makeup has more comments than anything on this blog, and I’m still not interested in reviewing more makeup.

Review: BOOM! By Cindy Joseph Makeup

My recent series of an adventure at Mackinac Island, Michigan and Grand Hotel has had a lot of readers. The post in that series that had the most views was about the closing of the Grand for the 2017 season.

Closing Grand Hotel for the 2017 Season

The review of the Great Recipes Collection also gets a lot of readers and comments. I love that people who commented were able to help each other find long lost recipes!

My Great Recipes Card Collection 1980

Interesting statistics

This website has had 35,981 malicious attacks attempted. Facebook is the top referrer. And there have been 9,003 spam comments blocked. So what do those blocked spam comments look like?

  • IndianBoobs said, “Wow, incredible blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? You make blogging look easy. The overall look for your website is fantastic, let alone the contect!” (Yeah right. I trust someone whose name is Indian Boobs…thanks, no thanks.)
  • Dari04 offers blogging tips, “I think your blog needs some fresh posts. Writing manually takes a lot of time, but there is tool for this time consuming task, search for; Boorfe’s tips unlimited content.” (Riiiight. A tool can write better than me. Nope. Search “Boorfe’s tips unlimited content” and see how many times it shows up in search results.)
  • Hassan said, “Hello there! Great report! I find nice how you explained Monthly Mindfulness August 2016. Yet one more great article starting from usefularticle author. We appreciate your the individual webpage! It usually is interesting to enjoy a book most people posts. When you’re publish a bit of a person will scribbling contenance beside me? It should help a lot in your incalculable conventional paper content creation for faculty .” (Do you even understand that?)

My 2017 Favorites

So that’s what the traffic statistics tell me. But when I look back over the writing for 2017, what do I like the best – besides the pictures of pretty flowers in the many garden posts? Here you go:

These pineapple cookies:

Pineapple Cookies from Cooking With Friends

Admonition to cover up and be brave:

Cover Up

The privilege of reviewing small batch tea from Plum Deluxe:

Plum Deluxe Gratitude Blend Black Tea

The post about grief and the death of Tom Petty.

Grief and Tom Petty

And finally, this tale of singing bowls and lost sandals:

This Magical World: The Tale of Singing Bowls and Sandals

In the comments, tell me what your favorite things to read on this blog. What should I write about next year?

My Great Recipes Card Collection 1981 – An Update

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UPDATE – February 2018:

This blog is no longer being updated.

I honor requests for recipes – but only if the request is through mygreatrecipescollection.com

My other website is www.julieawallace.com.

Thank you for stopping by!

 

One of the most popular posts on this blog is about my copy of My Great Recipes Card Collection from 1980. A number of comments asked for recipes. Today, some of those beloved, long-lost recipes resurface.

What Recipe?

Recipe requests aren’t easy to satisfy because we (you, me, everybody) don’t necessarily remember the actual name of the recipe.

You might remember that great cake you had that was chocolate and gooey. But do you remember the actual name of the cake? Probably not. Oh, you might remember a variation of the name, or what your family called the cake, or what you thought the ingredients were. But recipe titles get pretty hazy in the mists of time…like everything else.

So I did the best I could with matching the memories to the cards. Plus, upon much closer examination, I definitely do not have the entire collection.

Oh, I’ve got a bunch of cards here – nearly 2,000 – but am missing around 200. And I’ve made the full list of recipes available to everyone in a Google Spreadsheet (see link below for the link.)

Requested Recipes

The recipes requested included:

  • Cindee, looking for Almond Triangles. I couldn’t find it, but Jody suggested Almond Pastries.
  • Becky was looking for buttermilk chicken and Texas Brownie recipes
  • Raul was hunting for the ground beef and mushroom pie recipe.
  • Joan lost her recipe for turkey tettrazzini.
  • Lisa said one of her favorite recipes was no crust strawberry cheesecake using cottage cheese, not sour cream.
  • Cindy was looking for the texas sheet cake.
  • BeckyM was also looking for the buttermilk chicken recipe and said that you soaked chicken in buttermilk, then made biscuits with the leftover milk.
  • Linda was looking for both the sour cream walnut pound cake and an open-faced shrimp salad that had green onions and mustard, and was served on toast.
  • Stacie lost the creole meatloaf sauce that used to belong to her mom.
  • Shelley said someone took her cutty chicken recipe.
  • Joan said she loved the sloppy joes made with a canned of maple baked beans.
  • Kit said someone took her recipe for mudcake.

Recipes Located

With nearly 2,000 recipes to look through, it took me the better part of a weekend to find recipes and get the entire list typed up – plus photographing and uploading the pictures.

Here is Becky’s Buttermilk chicken. You sure do reserve 3/4 cup of the buttermilk to make biscuits with. Sounds delicious!

Joan’s sloppy joes made with maple baked beans are called Bean Sloppy Joes. They are in group 4 (Sandwiches) and are card 31. The recipe calls for a can of New England Style Beans.

Joan’s request for turkey tetrazzini stumped me for quite awhile. Then I found card 69 in group 18 – Pasta, Rice, and Potatoes. It’s for a noodles terazzini. The recipe calls for 2 cups pork. But what do the notes say? You can substitute 2 cups chicken or turkey.

Keeping with the savory theme, here’s the ground beef and mushroom pie that Raul was looking for.  It’s card 15 in “Great Ways With Ground Meat.” The recipe is Ground Beef and Mushroom Pie. And it sounds like it would be a good middle of winter comfort-kind of meal.

And that creole meatloaf sauce that Stacie wanted? It’s found on the creole meatloaf card. The sauce is made from butter, green pepper, onion, mushrooms, tomato juice, cornstarch, thyme, and water.

Dessert

Let’s move on to dessert. First, that Texas brownie that both Becky and Cindy wanted. It’s actually Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake – card 31 in collection 24 – Cakes and Pastries. The recipe is baked in a sheet pan. I wonder if you baked it in a 9×12 pan if it would be thicker and more brownie like?

Linda remembered a sour cream walnut pound cake. I couldn’t find anything that was quite like that. But then I found the Sour Cream Almond Coffee Cake. The nuts are only used in the topping, so it would be easy to substitute in walnuts instead of almonds. And I didn’t find another cake that sounded quite right.

Finally, here are those almond triangles that Cindee requested. I couldn’t find anything in the cookie or cake section that quite matched, but reader Jody pointed out that Cindee might be referring to Almond Pastries – card 17 in group 24, cakes and pastries. The recipe shows these have an orange-flavored almond paste filling.

Even More Recipes

Lisa asked for a “no crust strawberry cheesecake” that used cottage cheese, not cream cheese. I didn’t find anything with that exact title. However, while going through the list, I did find Coeur de Creme. The Coeur de Creme, on the other hand, is a cream cheese and powdered sugar mixture served with strawberries and an optional raspberry sauce. I’m including the image and recipe because it sounds kind of like a no crust cheesecake.

 

The other possibility might be the Strawberry-Cheese Pie – card 47 in group 25 (Pies and Tarts.) On the other hand, it does use small-curd cottage cheese and is a ‘no bake’ pie: you add a layer of cream & cottage cheese, then a layer of glaze, and finally strawberries. This was *not* the recipe Lisa was looking for. Scroll down to see the actual recipe she wanted.

List of Recipes

I decided to type the names of all of the recipes into a big Google spreadsheet. Orginally, I thought there were somewhere around a hundred recipes. Boy was I wrong.

In fact, the spreadsheet has almost 2,000 lines!

  • This is a Google Doc Sheet.
  • You can look at the spreadsheet.
  • You will see I am missing about 200 cards; they are marked “missing this card.”
  • You can download, print, or copy the spreadsheet.
  • You can’t make any changes to the spreadheet itself or to access.

Click here to view My Great Recipes Spreadsheet

Visit the original My Great Recipes Collection post.

What I Didn’t Find

I didn’t find Linda’s open-faced shrimp salad with green onions and mustard. And Shelley’s cutty chicken recipe is a mystery to me; there’s nothing in my collection that comes close.

Kit’s request for mudcake has me stumped, too. Kit thought it was in the barbeque and picnic section, but I don’t see anything that resembles mudcake.

Can anyone help with these requests? Add a comment below!

Update!

Lisa and Kit corresponded and collaborated and found both the Chocolate Mud Cake and the Strawberry No Bake Cheesecake.

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UPDATE – February 2018:

This blog is no longer being updated.

I honor requests for recipes – but only if the request is through mygreatrecipescollection.com

My other website is www.julieawallace.com.

Thank you for stopping by!

Grief and Tom Petty

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Last week was miserable for so many reasons. There was general busy-ness and pressure at work. I work in the tech industry and we have to learn and adapt continuously. I wasn’t feeling my best, so everything at work seemed twice as hard as normal.

But you know that’s not why it was a miserable week, right?

It started with Las Vegas, of course, which caused a heavy energy blanket to descend over the world – or at least over the American part of the world. My extra sensory antenna immediately felt that something was off with the whole situation in Vegas, but I couldn’t say what it was exactly.

Chris at The Secret Sun has been doing deep analysis of the symbols surrounding the Las Vegas event. You may not want to visit the site unless you’re ready for a rabbit hole of epic proportions; he’s good, and goes straight into the weirdness. The comments are just as interesting as the article. I love it; you may not.

Tom Petty

And then we lost Tom Petty.

Combining work, Vegas, and Petty in one week almost wiped me out. It would have been so easy to fall into a deep depression, the kind where you hunker under blankets. The kind of depression where you watch the same tv shows over and over and over just because they’re comforting.

Both Las Vegas and Petty engendered a widespread grief in society, too. It was a disparate grief, the kind you have when you don’t know quite what to say or to whom the grief in directed. It was unspecific and haunting.

I started listening to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in high school…back in the 70s. I distinctly remember looking at the cover of both the eponymous debut album and it’s follow-up You’re Gonna Get It in record bins at a local store and knowing I had to listen to that music.

For me, Petty’s death has caused a great deal of soul searching: why is this celebrity death hitting so hard? What meaning did I attach to this man and his music?

As I write this on Saturday night, I still don’t have answers to those questions. It’s still too soon. Heck, it’s still hard to listen to much music from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers right now. I did find R.E.M.’s “Automatic For The People” helpful, but then it’s filled with joy and wonder – like much of Petty’s writing.

I am finding comfort at my favorite Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers community – Mudcrutch Farm. The outpouring of love and sadness from online friends helps so very much. Thank you to Ryan for running the Farm all these years, and to all who frequent the community.

One of those Farm friends asked people to list those songs that, in Tom’s long and fruitful career, are often underrated or overlooked. Here are some of my favorites that you might have not heard.

Straight Into Darkness

This song is a longtime favorite. I was in the 18th row of this 2008 show, and about screamed my lungs out when I heard the opening chords.

Casa Dega

Luna

Tom shouts, “shut up” at someone in the audience at the start of the video.  And then it’s all heartbreak.

Crawling Back To You

Down South

1978 Old Grey Whistle Test

The band starts playing around the two minute mark, and keeps rolling for 45 minutes. Songs include Anything That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll, Fooled Again (I Don’t Like It,) I Need to Know, Breakdown, Listen to Her Heart, You’re Gonna Get It, American Girl, Strangered in the Night, and Shout

Change of Heart

It’ll All Work Out

Fortunately, the energy in the world lifted a little on Friday. I was thankful because I had yet another busy work day with clients visiting the office – a rarity. The heaviness of the week began to dissipate, and and the shock of losing Tom Petty started to change.

The weekend has been better. I hit up the local library’s annual $2 a bag book sale and brought home some treasures for reading over the winter. No doubt you’ll be seeing them in Let’s Read Books one of these days. And (if you haven’t noticed) I added a logo and changed the site navigation around just a tad.

I’m still sad. Still not listening to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – other than to put this post together. But life goes on, and I am moving forward slowly. One step at a time. How about you?

My Great Recipes Card Collection 1980

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UPDATE – February 2018:

This blog is no longer being updated.

I honor requests for recipes – but only if the request is through mygreatrecipescollection.com

My other website is www.julieawallace.com.

Thank you for stopping by!

 

 

This, my friends, is amazing: a complete set of My Great Recipes card collection from 1980.

UPDATE: It’s actually from 1981…and I’ve published a new blog post about this collection with several requested recipes. Read it now!

Back in June, I told you about an amazing collection of 1970s drinks and appetizers that I’d scored at the local thrift store. Though lightening rarely strikes twice, the cookbook collecting gods and goddesses were by my side during a recent return trip.

my great recipes card collection 1980

I think that’s what it’s called. I’ve found similar on Ebay, but (so far) not the exact collection.

Based on the musty smell that wafts from each card, this was stored in a basement.

Some cards stick together, but it’s easy to gently pulled them apart.

I haven’t counted all of the cards – maybe there are a hundred?

There’s a tempting recipe for Quesadillas, except in 1980 you’d make make the flour tortillas yourself.

And it weighs a ton. Or more like 10 pounds.

A heavy, see-through, smoky-brown plastic case protects the cards.

The case was damaged, but not destroyed. Maybe it was dropped, or something heavy landed on top of the case.

Still, at $1.99, this is an amazing find for a mid-century food lover. Did I mention the brown separator cards?

Membership Services

This is how you might get new recipes before the interwebs. You’d buy the starter kit with say 100 recipes, then additional recipes arrived each month; eventually you’d acquire the entire collection. Not so different from Bon Recipe (that I received for a few months in 2016; then they shut their doors,) or from the voluminous food blog choices today.

You’re encouraged to write and ask questions, or give advice, or share your favorite recipe. And they promise to help you with whatever cooking problems you might have.

And the “Cardmark” card is functional. When you remove a card to prepare the meal, you insert the Cardmark. That way, when you’re done cooking, it’s easy to find where to replace the recipe card.

Appropriate to the times, the collection is heavy on meats, cheeses, and creamy sauces. I was surprised to find a vegetarian section – also laden with cheese and cream. But also a Vegetable Curry that looks pretty easy to whip up.

—–

Remember,

This blog is no longer being updated.

I honor requests for recipes – but only if the request is through mygreatrecipescollection.com

My other website is www.julieawallace.com.

Thank you for stopping by!

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My Favorite Subscription Box

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Subscription Boxes are all the rage these days, and I’ve joined in with glee. A whole new generation of people is learning about the joys of receiving a box of goodies on their doorstep.

Receiving packages is nothing new, of course, as there have been plenty of subscription boxes and mail order catalogs in the past.

Who gets mail order catalogs anymore? I sure don’t.

These days subscription boxes are enhanced by sharing the goodies with everyone and anyone online. It’s fun to “reveal” the contents with with perfect strangers online? (Hi Perfect Strangers – I love you!)

There are groups on Facebook just for revealing the latest goods, and groups associated with specific clothing retailers so you -yes you- can benefit from a seemingly intimate relationship with the retailer. I belong to several, and heavens knows, enjoy them all. There’s a true camaraderie celebrating a particularly wonderful piece of clothing with other women.

Then the credit card bill comes in, and indescribable camaraderie quickly turns to ouch.

On the other hand, my favorite subscription box doesn’t cost a thing.

And you can’t get one.

tissue paper with flowers favorite subscription box 2

It’s a box I get from a friend.

We met nearly twenty years ago at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies and hit it off immediately. Since then our homes have been on opposite sides of the country, and we are rarely in the same place at the same time.

“You were just in Vegas for a conference? I’m headed there in a couple of weeks for the same.”

Bonded by a love of reading and writing, however, we have been sending boxes of books back and forth across the country for at least fifteen of those (gulp) almost twenty years.

I always have an empty box near my favorite reading chair. When I finish a book, it goes in the box. And when the box is full?

It travels to my friend across the country .along with anything else I’ve found that’s interesting.

My friend does the same thing, although I have to say, she’s a whole lot more consistent with sending boxes.

And her boxes are often more interesting than the ones I send. Here’s an example.

favorite subscription box 1

The “fashion mistake” was a shirt that didn’t work for my friend. It’s was a cute maroon tunic that I wore the next day with leggings and boots – right on the mark for current fashion.

And books! Plenty of books! Interesting fiction and poetry.

And lest you think that sending books across the country is too expensive, I invite you to discover the most wonderful pricing of “Book Rate” at the Post Office. If your package is just books, it’s much more affordable than First Class.

This is a lovely tradition shared by two good friends.

What kind of things do you do to celebrate your friendship?

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BAM! Bloggers At Midlife Conference

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When was the last time you felt utterly loved and accepted for who you are and what you do?

For me, that warm, cuddly (and hilarious) blanket happened during the Bloggers at Midlife Conference at the JW Marriott Las Vegas earlier this month. At the same time I was feeling loved and appreciated, I also also felt a bit like a deer in the headlights overwhelmed with information and not quite sure what to do next.

For the most part, I enjoy flying. Most airports have food and shops. And my connecting flight through Detroit Metro Airport meant I got to walk through the tunnel of light and sound:

The early evening flight on Delta Airlines meant that the plane chased the sunset across the country. By the time we landed in Las Vegas, the sun was down and the night life had begun. Thank goodness I had a new friend to navigate the thirty minute drive to the hotel.

flying delta airlines wwwwordstormcasserolecom

I went to my assigned gate A3 at DTW (Detroit Metro.) Met Jesus. Minutes later, gate changed. Thank you, Jesus.

The conference was two days packed solid. Here are snippets of wisdom captured in my handwritten notes:

Bloggers at midlife 2016 words of wisdom wwwwordstormcasserolecom

The conference was sponsored by Domain.ME, Boiron, Nissan, John Hancock Insurance, Osteo Bi-Flex Joint Health, Feedblitz, Lincoln Financial Group, Galderma, Madison Reed, Chico’s, Mother Head, Prudential, Vibrant Nation, Artful Home, She Spark, Cabot Cheese, iBlog Magaine, Hashtracking.com, and Zappos. Each provided exceptional advice and awesome giveaways. There was also ample time to discuss potential business partnerships with the sponsors.

bamCollagewwwwordstormcasserolecom

Hashtracking.com provided a real-time display of tweets. I know I tweeted a lot during these few days. In fact, our conference hashtag of #BAMC16 was tweeted more than 5,000 times, trended on Twitter, and had a reach of about three million people. That’s amazing and positive power in one room of only 150 people.

Of course, the best part of the conference had to be making wonderful new friends, and laughing for hours about the clown car escapade and disco dancing.

What on earth will the 2017 conference bring? I can’t wait to find out.

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Monthly Mindfulness: Coloring Books

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Have you caught the coloring book craze? All over the world, adults are coloring up everything in sight. Don’t believe me?
This February article on Yahoo! Style gives a brief overview of this huge “lifestyle” trend. Not only do adults feel creative while coloring, the activity is one way to bring mindfulness into your life. So grab some colored pencils or pens and join in the (stress-reducing) fun.

First, I’ll start with something that’s NOT a coloring book: it’s a free app! I use Colorfy on my iPad and think it’s great. Plus -like so many apps- it’s FREE. No way you can beat that. Just don’t forget that you can make things larger or smaller as needed while working digitally. Now on to three books that I own:

The Secret Garden by Johanna Basford. Having sold more than 2 million copies, this is definitive adult coloring book that kicked off the craze. It’s not your childhood coloring book at all. A quick look at the cover tells you what you need to know about the inside coloring: details, flowers, animals, and -what makes this a fun book- hidden things to find.

(This post contains affiliate or referral links. These links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting Word Storm Casserole.)

If you’re more spiritually inclined like me, you might enjoy The Mindful Mandala Coloring Book by Lisa Tenzin-Dolma. There are full-color examples of the mandalas, plus a brief history of each. For example, the Dragon Knotwork mandala on page 122 talks about the dragon’s power being “poured into the endless knot of spiritual perfection. Earth and spirit blend in cosmic harmony.”

The third coloring book I have also features mandalas: The Mandala Coloring Book by Jim Gogarty. He is the founder of iheartmandalas.com. There are more than 100 mandalas to color, and I find I can finish one in less than 90 minutes. Gogarty is also the founder of iheartmandalas.com.

And I would be totally remiss if I did not mention Zentangle while writing about coloring and mindfulness. Not strictly coloring, and not really ‘art’ like you  might remember from middle school art class, Zentangle helps you find a “zen-like” calm.  The Book of Zentangle by founders Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas might be a little pricey, but if you want to learn from the founders, you want this book.

Here are a couple other Zentangle-inspired books that will help you become familiar with the easy-to-learn technique.

Zentangle Basics, Expanded Workbook Edition: A Creative Art Form Where All You Need is Paper, Pencil & Pen by Suzanne McNeill CZT

And finally, One Zentangle A Day by Beckha Krahula is an intriguing introduction to the art of Zentangle

Thanks for reading! Subscribe to Word Storm Casserole by Email

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Retreat: 31 Days of Mindfulness & Meditation

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Just imagine a week with no cell phone, no internet, no work demands. A week totally dedicated to you and you alone.

That’s what a meditation retreat is like, and I’m here to advocate for you (yes you, the person reading this) – for YOU – to find a way to make something like that happen in your life.

It doesn’t have to be a full week, and it doesn’t have to be a formal practice. A weekend at a cottage by a lake would be perfect. Or a couple days at a fancy-schmancy retreat center. Or heck, even a weekend at home where you plan to do nothing.

Whatever you can do, plan to make it happen. And be sure to work in time for some of the meditation things you’ve learned throughout the month.

  • Do a guided meditation.
  • After the dishes are cleaned up from dinner, sit quietly staring at a candle for 10 minutes and see what arises.
  • Take a long, solitary walk through a local park – hug a tree or two while you’re there.
  • Prepare and eat a meal mindfully.

Most importantly, find time to do nothing. Our lives are so packed with activity that it takes at least a day or more to truly unpack ourselves – to let go of everything that must be done now, and just be. Try to just “be” a little tonight:

  • When you do the dishes, just do the dishes.
  • When you brush your teeth, just brush your teeth.
  • When you rake the leaves, just rake the leaves.

So much of our mindspace while performing these simple tasks gets filled with monkeymind, that we are bouncing from past to future and back. While brushing our teeth at the end of a long day, we’re reviewing the long day (the past) and thinking about tomorrow’s long day (the future.) Life, however, is about now. And now you’re brushing your teeth, not having that conversation you had six hours ago with a co-worker.

So just brushing your teeth means that: brush your teeth. Keep your mind quiet.

Before you brush your teeth, take a deep breathe in and find your quiet space. That space where the mind IS calm (or calmer.) Then go through your nightly ritual of brushing your teeth. When you start thinking about the past or future, stop. And then continue.

After all, meditation and mindfulness are considered “practice.” You will always be practicing, and someday, you will have now.

But for now, brush your teeth. Breathe. And get on with the little things.

—

For the full list of associated posts, click here.

Zen: 31 Days of Mindfulness & Meditation

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Today is about Zen.

You probably already have an idea what Zen is all about. After all, Googling Zen brings up 260,000,000 potential results. That same search on Pinterest returns many different categories: Zen bathrooms, Zen quotes, Zen garden, Zen Lifestyle, Zentangle, Zen Tattoo, Zen Office…the list goes on and on.

So what is Zen?

To some, Zen is way of decorating the home that is simple and minimal. To others, Zen is one of those “gardens” where monks rake stones in pretty patterns.  Zen is as much a state of mind as it is a way of living.

For us, it’s a style of meditation to try. We’ve kind of already done this…remember learning how to breathe on Day 1? True Zen meditation (aka Zazen) is formless, there is nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing you have to do. You don’t even have to watch your breathe, but you do have to pay attention the whole time.

Just how long can you make it without getting lost in thoughts? Has this length improved over the month? Why or why not?

Sit quietly for five minutes, ten minutes. Do nothing, absolutely nothing.

Just breathe.

And, if you want to learn more about Zen, this movie trailer is a brief introduction to life in a Japanese monastery. This one, too (and it’s both longer and older.)

For the full list of associated posts, click here.