At Long Last

Celebrating with friends after Jukai Ceremony, Nov 15, San Francisco
Left to right: Sue Moon, Kristi Markey, Gina Horrocks, moi, Diana Winston,
Victoria Shosan Austin, Maryann Hrichak, Ellen Peskin, Anchalee Kurtach.

This has been a sabbatical from the sabbatical! It’s been a busy time, so much so that I may need to re-name this blog and this phase of my life, as ‘sabbatical’ no longer seems to fit. What’s been going on in these nearly four months since the last post?

• I’ve continued to live at Upaya Zen Center here in Santa Fe, keeping most of the schedule with the other residents (up at 6:30 am, sit zazen until breakfast at 8, work during the day, end the day with zazen at 5:30 pm).
• I’ve continued to coordinate Upaya’s Chaplaincy Training Program.
• I completed a hefty research paper for the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society’s Military Care Providers Project.
• I finally, finally, FINALLY (did I say finally?) completed sewing my rakusu and received jukai (lay ordination as Zen Buddhist) at San Francisco Zen Center in November. Check out the photo above.
• Spent a couple of wonderful weeks by the ocean in Monterey, sewing the aforementioned rakusu, catching up with my friend Kristi, and getting the remainder of my stuff out of storage in San Francisco.
• Took a road trip with Gina from California back to New Mexico, where me and all my stuff now live.

There’s a sense of completion and resolution settling in… at least some of the big questions that I sketched out at the start of this blog seem to be answering themselves bit by bit.

And now it’s definitely winter here in Santa Fe – several inches of fresh snow on the ground this morning. It’s beautiful, the contrast of the white snow and the warm brown adobe. The batteries in my camera need re-charging but as soon as it’s ready I’ll take and post some photos here, because you really can’t miss Santa Fe in the snow – it’s exquisite.

I have missed blogging and staying in touch with you, dear friends and readers, so I am making an intention to resume this practice more consistently. Stay tuned!