How to Cook Your Life

 

The video, How to Cook Your Life is comtemplative and inspirational. I find myself wanting to make bread now and to slow my thinking down and let things rise from my mind as the bread dough rises after being fed with all the ingredients it needs to nourish our bodies.
Zen priest and chef, Edward Brown talks about life through food preparation. As with everything we do, we can look at the way we prepare our food and eat our food and compare our actions in the kitchen with the actions we usually take in our lives. This documentary visits Tassajara Zen Center, Green Gulch Zen Center, and the San Francisco Zen Center as it instructs and inspires us to live our lives consciously and with purpose.
Edward Brown looks at the metal tea pots with dents and creases and likens them to our lives with wrinkles and troubles. They are what makes us who we are and we continue to be useful with any and all of our dings and dents. That’s a good, good thought to keep in mind as I age!  Sometimes I think I need to be that perfect shining tea pot that performs as if new all the time.  I have to remember patience and forgiveness, mindfulness and appreciation as I move through my days.  Oh yes, and don’t forget to breathe!

Sacred Life Sunday – Patience

Chinese symbol for Patience

 

 

 

“Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’  Then a voice says to me.  ‘This is going to take more than one night.’ ” –Charlie Brown

Patience has been eluding me lately.  Try as I may, the anxiety and frustration of some days lead me to a place I’m not feeling good about.  So I guess I need to be more patient with myself in finding patience with the world around me. 

 As James and Constance Messina say in their writing about patience, “Wake up to the realities of life around you.  Everyone with whom you come in contact is busy working through their own struggles, weaknesses, setbacks, relapses, crises, and obstacles to their personal growth and recovery.  All of us are on the path to personal growth.  Their is no one exempt from this journey.  It takes a lifetime to complete.“

Note to self:

This week I will focus on breathing in relaxation, breathing out tension and frustration.  I will breathe in tolerance and understanding and breathe out anger and impatience.

This week I will take one day at a time and make each day more positive by finding at least five things each day which can bring peace, joy and humor into my life.

This week I will look for solutions, remind myself to accept what is, and work toward the goals I have set for myself which always makes me feel more positive and hopeful.  Refocus will be my word for the week.

“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”
  - Maya Angelou

“Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance. “
  - Unknown

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.  Attitude, to me is more important than facts.  It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstance, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do.  It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.  It will make or break a company…a church…a home.  The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.  We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.  We cannot change the inevitable.  The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.  I am convinced that life is 10%  what happened to me and 90% of how I react to it.  And so it is with you…we are in charge of our Attitudes.”  –Charles R Swindoll

This is my goal for the week. 

Gail Brokaw
http://www.embracethepossibility.org