Tag: Mindfulness

Posted in My Saturday Evening Post

My Saturday Evening Post: 1/11/25 “The Highest Bidder?”

Posted on by Neal Saye

So back in 1985 I started saving my yearly/monthly calendars.

I’m not sure why.

So that makes … what? Forty years in 2025.

I suppose it started out as just a way to remember birthdays, appointments, to do’s and other important (or unimportant) dates I was prone to forget. This was before the days of “Siri, remind me ….”

But it morphed into jottings of my hopes and dreams, my frustrations, my successes, my problems, my New Year’s Resolutions (difficult to look back over today), my very … non-Facebook life.

As I skim through the pages of years/years of pages, I see emerging themes: family, children, travel, career, wife, ex-wife, coming out, husband, grandchildren, parental deaths, medical issues, joy, sorrow … Life.

I’m not sure what to do with them. Leave them to my daughters? Burn them?

The National Enquirer? People Magazine? The highest bidder?

Here’s to my new calendar for 2025 and whatever it may bring.

May your 2025 calendar be filled with Good.

And that’s my Saturday Evening Post. 1/11/2025.

Posted in Monday Moaning or Monday Marveling?

Monday Moaning or Monday Marveling? 1/6/25 “Small Kindnesses”

Posted on by Neal Saye

Marveling this Monday Morning at the simple and beautiful truth of poetry.

Small Kindnesses

By Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

Danusha Laméris’ insightful poem asks us to notice and cherish the many “small kindnesses” we exchange with strangers as we move through the world. Though quick, these moments have the potential to fulfill our shared need for compassion. 

Posted in Encouragement

“Almost Everything”

Posted on by Neal Saye

As I mentioned in a previous post, HR and I are up in Baltimore for his aunt’s funeral. It has been an extraordinarily busy couple of days, and we are both worn out.

So this afternoon, the last day of 2024, I found us a little independent bookstore/coffeeshop/winery, Backwater Books, in Ellicott City, a beautiful little hamlet about thirty minutes west of Baltimore.

From the moment we parked in Ellicott City’s parking area by the bubbling Patapsco River, we began to slow down.

OK, maybe my hair didn’t.

Stepping into the shop, holiday bookishness (can that be a word?) greeted us …

We looked around at the inviting stacks …

Robert got us got a dram of wine and we settled down …

For calm and quiet for the first time in days.

Posted in Holiday Joy

Peaceful Christmas Eve To You All

Posted on by Neal Saye

I have shared this little virtual Christmas card on my blog before (I received it from a dear sweet friend several years ago), but it is just so very meditatively “Christmas Eve Simple Peaceful” that I thought I would post it again.

Bethlehem‘s in sight!

Posted in Encouragement

This Dirt

Posted on by Neal Saye

Each Monday morning I find a poem in my email from a former colleague at Georgia Southern University, where I taught for a zillion years. Eric calls his service Carpe Monday/Seize the Poem.

Yesterday’s was particularly insightful.

Robert and me, dirt trail, Great Smoky Mountains
Posted in Christmas Countdown 2023

Countdown to Christmas: 12/24/23 — “Sing a Christmas Song”

Posted on by Neal Saye

This year my Countdown to Christmas is a nontraditional Advent Calendar centering (pun intended) on mindfulness.

On the front of each card is neat little picture, and on the back are the instructions for the short meditation.

Today, the 24th and last Day of Advent … SING A CHRISTMAS SONG.

Here are today’s instructions:

Activating your body, mind, breath and voice, there are few activities that involve you more comprehensively in the present than singing. Your task today is to sing a Christmas song.

Don’t worry, this need not be some grand solo performance to an audience – it could be singing carols as part of a group, an a cappella version in the safety of the shower, or simply singing along to a song on the radio – wherever you choose to sing, all that matters is that you give it your full attention and really go for it.

Feel the breath in your chest and the vocal vibrations in your throat; hear the sound of your voice; follow the patter of the melody, consider the meaning of the lyrics. Feel the various emotions involved, both in the tone and message of the song and in the personal feelings you get from the activity of singing. And most of all, enjoy singing for singing’s sake, for the fun and expressive act that it is.

Singing engages you completely in the moment and can be as relaxing as it is exhilarating.

Here’s a short video of grandson Daniel and his girlfriend Amalie singing “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” at a Savannah Ghost Pirates ice hockey game last night …

May your Christmas 2023 be a Song of Joy.