Sunday Morning

I finished the meat of my paper last night around 11pm. It does not, unfortunately, live up to the promise of those two paragraphs I posted last week. But it is done. I have a brief conclusion to write and a brief creative response, and I'll email it to the prof on Monday. It will have the virtue of being done -- which, unfortunately, is sometimes enough.

This morning, for the first time in ages, I got up and put in time on the treadmill. It wasn't a lot, only 105 calories burned, but that's a heck of a lot more than I've been doing, and I expect the count will go up as I persist.

I've realized recently that I need to take more control of my time if I'm going to have time to do the things I really want to do. So I've dusted off my Covey organizer, downloaded the free trial of their Outlook tool, and am waiting for the new charger for the new Palm that my dad just gave to me. Time to "make time for what matters most" and stop burning it up in soft addictions like mindless websurfing and equally mindless computer games.

In a few minutes I'm going to leave to attend the 9:30 meeting at the Friends/Quaker church, then its home, snack, change clothes, and take the daughter to a paint-your-own pottery store where we're going to be creative together for a few hours.

Happy day, everyone!

Sunday Night

The paper is done and gone.
Yea!
It's the least effective paper I've written since starting seminary, but I feel like I learned a lot writing it, so the exercise wasn't a total loss.

Had fun at the pottery paint shop with my daughter this afternoon.

And remember my musings about service recently?
An ex-boyfriend, with whom I have recently come back into amiable contact, emailed me this afternoon requesting my support through shamanic prayer for his dog, who was diagnosed with some sort of condition that was inhibiting red blood cell production, and that he had been given a 50-50 chance at survival.

This friend is a Pagan priest-shaman, but was so caught up in fear for his beloved companion he could not muster the concentration to perform a ritual.

I've never prayed for a pet before.
I've never done formal shamanic prayer before - although I have been learning about it.
But I figured this was an explicit call for me to exercise my spiritual vocation in response to need, so I had no business claiming that this "wasn't my style" or that I "didn't know what I was doing."

So I mixed my intuition with what little I know, set up an altar, lit a candle and some sage, and started shaking my rattle.

I am happy to report that the afflicted dog is once again making red blood cells on his own.

I hasten to add that I am not the only one who was praying for him, and he is not out of the woods yet.
But it feels good to think that perhaps I contributed.

If nothing else, it feels good to know that someone trusted me and believed in me enough to ask, and I was able to say "yes" to him.

I don't always say "yes" to people.