Laughing all the way

Every once in a while, you meet someone who feels like a long-lost friend, even if you've never met before. It was like that for me and Caroline. We crossed paths at UU summer camp about five years ago when I sat next to her for a meal. We had some surface things in common, including being at the camp and being moms of teenage daughters. But over the course of our conversation, we learned that she'd grown up in the same small town clear across the country -- Salem, Ohio -- where I had my first newspaper job after college. She'd also lived a while after that in Pittsburgh, where I grew up. By the end of the week, we were doing the Time Warp together in a dining hall flash mob. "We're embarrassing our daughters!" Caroline said gleefully.

A few years later, when Caroline mentioned she'd become a certified laughter leader, I was not surprised. Today, at long last, I got to take her class. What a hoot! Caroline led our group of five in a litany of laughing exercises. (My favorites include the clam-shell laugh, the lawnmower laugh, the nervous lost-in-the-airport laugh and the laugh you do when tearing off those mattress and pillow labels that say, "DO NOT REMOVE THIS LABEL.")

There's lots of science that shows the many ways laughing is good for our health. It reduces stress and pain, promotes good sleep and gets the blood pumping. (Caroline's 45-minute class today felt like a good low-impact aerobic workout.) Plus it's just plain fun to goof off and giggle.

Caroline is affiliated with the World Laughter Tour, which has laughter leaders and laughter clubs, plus six daily practices for good-hearted living. A similar organization, Laughter Yoga International, has lots of great resources including laughter clubs held several times a day via Skype. Next on my list: Getting to the weekly laugh-in at Harborview Medical Center here in Seattle, where laughter is good medicine for people at the Northwest's major medical trauma hospital.

(A) few words about prayer

Since September, I've been part of a UU Wellspring class -- and a big point of this post is to say that if you are a Unitarian Universalist interested in spiritual deepening, you may want to consider Wellspring, too.

Last night's topic was prayer. I am not going to say much about the session because in Wellspring, we create circles of trust, and I will invoke that for myself as much as for my fellow Wellspring travelers. I'll say this much: I arrived at the session with a full and somewhat heavy heart, grateful that prayer was the topic.

I pray daily, never kneeling, sometimes with my eyes closed, but more often with them wide open in wonder. And because I spend so much of my life working with words, for me, words in prayer are often beside the point.

So it was harder than I'd have expected when we were asked to take a few minutes and write a prayer during our session. Still, because "I am who I am," I wrote three. The first:

I pray because
I pray because it helps me find the stillness
I pray because I am too much with myself
I pray because I am thankful
I pray because I want to pay attention 
I pray for strength
I pray for peace
I pray because

Looking at that, the poet in me liked the repetition, but the editor in me thought, "too many I's."

My next one:

Spirit of life
give me stillness
give me strength
give me reason
give me love

Then my editor went back and changed the gives to grants. You see how it can be terribly difficult to be an editor, to continually be getting in my own way ... even in prayer, for god's sake.

Here's what I finally came up with:

Prayer is something 
when words fail me
when I finally get out of
my head and into 
my heart.
It's an experience
of gratitude ... and longing
and love.
Sometimes it's my senses
working overtime.
Sometimes it's me sitting still. 
It is marvelous.
It is essential. 
It is enough. 

We took turns reading our prayers. One of the prayers was sung. One had exactly one word.

Wow. 

Exactly.

Amen.


UU Wellspring

https://twitter.com/MUTTScomics/status/668444536121786368

Hospitality

I've loved hummingbirds forever, but it was only a few years ago -- while living in Oakland, with this simple window feeder -- that I was able to successfully lure them. My first two years in Seattle, though, I lived above a noisy corner, with crows perched on streetlamps nearby and a confusing mass of sliding-door and balcony glass. It was a strict hummingbird no-fly zone.

When I moved to my new place in October, I figured I'd wait until spring to try again. But on a walk one chilly December morning in the Wedgwood neighborhood nearby, I saw hummingbirds thronging to a front-yard feeder and decided, what the heck? If it doesn't work, I'm just out a little bit of sugar. So I put up my feeder just before Christmas. To help keep the nectar liquid in the near-freezing temps and also help attract some birds, I topped it with a tie-dye sock in hummer-friendly colors.

My new place is still on a pretty busy street, so I didn't expect much. But on Christmas Eve morning, talking with my daughter as we rearranged some furniture for a gathering that night, I saw a hummer swoop in from around the corner of my building. They'd arrived, the best Christmas ornaments of all, flashing patches of green and magenta. And now, a few days after taking this picture, I'm ready to refill the feeder.

So thanks to the hummingbirds for your beauty and endless cheap entertainment. Thanks to Natalie for the sock. While I'm at it, thanks to Wilco for a great song. And thanks to my brother-in-law Kevin for the feeder. I sadly had to put it away for two whole years, but it's once again a gift that keeps on giving.

Make time for magic

At  the Cineplex Odeon theaters in Canada, they've been showing this short video before feature films. I caught it on a visit to Vancouver last weekend. Take 2 minutes to watch it. You might want to keep a few Kleenex handy.

Beautiful, yes? Thanks to everyone who made this little reminder to take time for things (and people) we love. Special thanks to vocalist Adaline for breathing new life into the classic Genesis song. (Here's a short "making of" clip.)

One of my life's greatest pleasures is going to the movies, and I especially love going with my sweetheart. Last year, we went to 42 movies together. I know because we kept track on a calendar. (Here's part of the page from August.) 

We like smart movies, movies that tell stories, movies where we recognize bits of our better selves, as well as the struggles and heartbreaks -- but mostly the joys -- of being alive.* And while watching movies at home is great, too, there's nothing like sitting in the dark with a bunch of strangers and watching the magic unfold, larger than life. (I also love this clip for the Regal chain, even if it's selling Coke.) 

Here's to magic, and another great year at the movies.

*Some of my favorites from 2015, in alphabetical order: 

The Big Short, Brooklyn, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Dope, The End of the Tour, Grandma, I'll See You in My Dreams, Inside Out,  The Martian,  McFarland, Mistress America, Room, Seoul Searching, Seymour: An Introduction,  Shaun the Sheep, Spotlight, Steve Jobs

(We haven't seen The Force Awakens yet!)