Big Snow 2009: Worse than Lent

"If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves."
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 28





On the drive home from the airport -- thoroughly relieved that we'd avoided becoming an overnight-with-two-kids-in-the-airport statistic — we were talking, driving in Grandma’s Volvo through the snow toward the Eastern Shore.

The snow was getting heavier, the temperature right at freezing, and the snow was beginning to stick. We were wondering what had happened to the plane coming in from Atlanta.

“You know, you could hop on the web from your phone and check the flight status!” my dad said, apparently forgetting about my experiment.

“I know,” I said. “I’ll just have to wait till we get back and you can look it up.”

“You know, this is worse than lent,” said my dad.

He suggested if I really wanted to get extreme I could give up voice mail too. I told him I had no interest in doing that.

His 90-year-old golfing buddy doesn’t own a computer. My dad this says it makes it much harder to schedule a game with him.
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We got home fine, and it was fun to look over Dad’s shoulder at flightaware.com to see all the stats on the planes flying.

The plane got in from Atlanta, and our would-be flight departed at 9:01 pm from Baltimore, and arrived in Portland around 10, having had about a 70-knot tail wind.

Golfing with Grandpa, Chi Gong with Geese

"...Doing is never enough if you neglect Being."
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 103






Still February 28, 2009
Easton, MD

Yesterday, a new experience. When we're here and the weather's good, the kids go out with grandpa to the golf course.

They get duded up in their polo shirts and Crocs, haul their downsized golf bags out to the car. At the golf course, they get to whack some fluorescent yellow golf balls on the driving range, and if they're behaving, they get to drive the golf cart. These days, now that they're bigger, I usually stay behind.

All of a sudden, that fear of being alone.

It was warm out, about 60, and windy. I took the moment and went for a walk by myself. Always before, walking alone on the Eastern Shore, the awareness of pain all around has been overwhelming — past pain, current pain, personal pain. Not my own, but that of others. Historic pain. Lots of beauty, but always pain.

For the first time ever yesterday, I feel like I connected with the spiritual aspect of the Eastern Shore. I stopped along the path and did some Chi Gong exercises, there by the corn field, amidst the honking of geese gleaning the field.