over

Whew! It's over. The two-day seminar has come to a close. The only thing left to do is gather all our receipts for reimbursement and have a debriefing meeting on Monday. Tomorrow (Sunday) is definitely a rewarding "I'm going to do nothing" day. Except church, and I don't actually have any responsibilities there, either.

I didn't get to post yesterday. That was the first day of the retreat, and my busiest day of facilitating. I presented material the whole morning. And if I do say so myself, I nailed it. It felt good, easy. I had fun, the students had fun. It was enjoyable material.

I did take photos, but nothing that I would qualify as "beauty". It was mostly participants participating. I still intended to post anyway, perhaps picking the most interesting shot I could find, but right about the time I was ready to start the power went out in the place we were staying. It was 10:30 by then anyway, and I was exhausted. So I gave up and went to bed.

Today I had fewer teaching responsibilities, but was in charge of lots of logistics and details. I made a list and was checking it off all day.

However, during a quiet time when we sent all the participants off to spend time with God, I did manage about 30 minutes to myself. I found myself sitting still just looking mindlessly at this huge cloud piled up in the sky. Seriously, I have never seen clouds billow and tower in the sky the way they do here in this tropical country. I was captured by it, drawn in, and strangely calmed.

Then I remembered something from my childhood. When I was young I used to come home from school, grab my after school snack (usually a Little Debbie snack cake), climb up in my favorite tree and chill out up there. I remember feeling so content there, suspended between earth and sky, surrounded by wind and leaves and bark and clouds. My mind and heart were utterly at peace.

I recaptured just a little of that today, and it was like catching a glimpse of an old friend.

When did it get so hard to stop and do nothing? Where did the joy of simple pleasures go? How did a quiet mind become so hard to come by?

I don't know. But I do know that I want to make opportunity for more times like that in the near future.