peace

i was going to post some pretty pictures for you, but apparently there aren't any image upoads today and i'm balancing a laptop on my stickshift (no, that's not a sexual reference) and don't really have the right environment for posting to a secondary site and then linking them, so you can just wait until i get home.

but yesterday i was feeling kind of miserable but i was looking for some caches ayway, kind of mulling over in my head what to do next, and feeling very unsatisfied.

and then all of a sudden i was sitting at a buddhist shrine out in the woods (no joke)  and there was this rock there on which the word "patience" had been carved and painted and maybe you would have just said to yourself  "wow, that's cool", but what i thought was i'd better get myself down to the peace pagoda in leverett for evening prayers.

meantime while i was still in the woods, i came across a labyrith made of stones laid out on the forest floor (i'm not kidding about this, and later i'll have pictures to show you) so i dropped all my gear and walked the labyrinth in prayer.

so a few hours later i'm back in massachusetts, walking up the hill to the peace pagoda and i see a man working on the new temple and ask him about evening prayers and he tells me where i can go and at about what time they will gather and then i hang out for a while in the gardens and eventually make my way down to the house where i meet sister claire and she takes me inside and teaches me a few of the basics.

it is a very different sort of evening prayer than anything i am accustomed to, but i'm expecting that. later on i'll tell you more about the prayers and about the pagoda and about this particular order and the work they do, but for now i will tell you that their prayers are not at all incompatible with those of my christian faith; when i have pictures to show you or more time to sit i'll tell you more.

but i will tell you that this morning i woke to a bright blue morning at twenty-seven degrees feeling fine and well and happy and now i'm going out to play.

be well, be blessed.

and go in peace.