Practice Openminded Daily Serenity

Practice Openminded Daily Serenity

Every day for the past year I have driven past this PODS container on the way to and from my rural Big Sur home.

I hate it.  Poor me. I am so lucky to live in this remote redwood canyon of handmade homes and funky people.  But this commercial plastic homage to how much STUFF we all have drives me crazy.

We are an isolated independent community. We leave each other alone.  We don't have the greatest social skills.  But we do have a neighborhood email list.  For months I contemplated what I could write that would be kind but also direct on the subject of this eyesore.

Finally I wrote, "Is there a nice way to ask the folks with this PODS container to cover it or move it?  Or should I just, like so many things, rise above it and let it go?"

Many wise responses from various neighbors, basically on the point - let it go, accept.  One said he too hates it, but he tries to visualize it as a giant piece of granite washed down the hill over millions of years, with wildflowers in its crevices, and a dwarf perched on top.  Or a stage set for a Prince concert, who is about to do a sound check.  Take a sad song and make it better. 

Their responses inspired me to make up a better mantra for that horrific PODS container, which for months I had been calling a "Piece Of Despicable S***."

Now I drive by and say to myself- "Practice Openminded Daily Serenity."  PODS.

(The PODS owner did respond, but it was not what I wanted to hear, so I let it go….)

This coming weekend our Blue Theology Mission Station will host 27 middle school kids and 8 adult chaperones from 10 different congregations of the Northern California Nevada Conference of the United Church of Christ.  We will do a pilgrimage walk to the Aquarium, and have a spiritual tour there, do two beach clean-ups on Cannery Row and Asilomar beaches, visit the Pt. Pinos Lighthouse, oldest continuously operated lighthouse on the west coast, 1853, and consider God as our lighthouse.

And generally contemplate the idea - God loves the ocean and wants us to love it better.

How to love God's creation better?  Maybe by reducing our stuff?  Asking for guidance?  Getting along better with our neighbors? Practicing Openminded Daily Serenity? Learning to accept pieces of s**** and transform them....Other ideas?

___________ 

Check out www.bluetheology.com for dates this summer for youth service trips and adult pilgrimages along Monterey Bay.  I am looking forward to two days this month with a clergywoman taking a sabbatical trip down the coast on the subject of pilgrimage – we will pray, sing, do spiritual tour of the Aquarium, and take a nice long walk around Point Lobos.  Be in touch if you want to plan some kind of ocean pilgrimage.  I post these Wednesday “Blue Theology Tideings” here and at www.bluetheologytideings.blogspot.com  (This week on Thursday, power out from the storm.)