Week-end of Abundance

I head back to DC today.  I have a 6:30 pm class, so there's plenty of time.  Once, though, I'd have thrown the last load of stuff in the car, filled up my thermoses, and been on the road by 4:00 or so.  But that was back in the South Florida days, South Florida where it is never truly O dark thirty.

Here in the mountains, it's dark--dark--before the sun comes up.  It will be safer to wait until a bit closer to sunrise to leave.

Yesterday at the Crafts for Christmas retreat, one of the woman said that her father had told her that for every fog in August, there will be a snowfall.  I said, "Well, we're in for a humdinger of a winter."  Everyone nodded.  One of the few non-foggy days in August was August 28, when I headed back to seminary by myself at 4:00 a.m.  The roads weren't foggy, but they were dark in a terrifying way.

The women at the Crafts for Christmas retreat talked about weather wisdom of the elders, and about Harriet Tubman and navigating by the stars and about how younger generations have no sense of any of this.  What a relief to be amongst my people:  educators and people who know how to make all sorts of soul sustaining things, from preserved food to cookies to quilted hearts.

I ate as many cookies in one day as I eat in six months.  When I got the invite for the retreat, I said that I couldn't bring a craft to share, but I was told there would be plenty.  Yes, plenty--many people brought not only supplies for their craft, but other supplies too.  It was heaven:  tables loaded with cloth, beads, baskets, papers, wood, found objects, on and on.  

We were similarly equipped with food.  In fact, I'll be taking some of it back with me.  I felt a bit bad for not bringing food to share, but there was plenty, and I know that more than one person delighted in the fact that they were helping the seminary student who didn't have time to cook or gather craft supplies.  I apologized once or twice and then decided to quit nattering on about it.

We are all from religious communities who believe in sharing, who believe that the sharing produces abundance.  And we had an abundant week-end.

Soon I will head back to my abundant life in DC.  I have a car crammed with all the last minute items that I didn't take last time, from a laundry basket to a lamp.  I have some groceries and some treats.  I have books that I planned to read for this week's classes; I did skim them, but for the most part, I devoted myself to crafts this week-end.  My spouse and I had time to reconnect.

I indulged in the abundance of crafts and Christmas music and cookies and reconnecting, and I have no regrets.