Sunday Serenity #41

Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach is one of the aids I've been using this month in my quest to create the life I want. This isn't the first time I began working with this book. I bought my own copy of it while we lived in Sunnyvale CA in 2000 and shortly thereafter found a copy of it for sale on the Friends of the Library shelf at the Library. I bought it and inscribed the front piece to my Sister-Friend Jamie and mailed it to her. I suggested that we work through it together. We exchanged a few letters, emails and phone calls discussing it over the next several months before both of our lives began to unravel in their unique ways.

My copy of the book was sold along with most of my personal library in the summer of 2001. Last month when I was visiting my family, Jamie put her copy in my hand and said she wanted me to have it so that we could work on it together again. She had bought the workbook that goes with it and thought it would suffice for her. I was reluctant to accept her offer of the book but I knew how important this project we had agreed together the week of Thanksgiving to begin by the New Year was to her. So I accepted with a provision, that I would borrow it until I was able to get my own copy again.

Because of Jamie's generous gift back to me of the gift I once gave her, I was more motivated than I might have been otherwise to make proper use of it. It is one of the books I spend time with nearly daily. I may have missed a day three or four times and then combined it with the next day but I don't think I've missed more than one day since January 1.

This has added serenity to my days.

On the January 14th entry, the day after she first discusses the importance of gratitude for the Simple Abundance path, Sarah Ban Breathnach insists that if you are intent on following this path with her having a Gratitude Journal is not an option. I resisted at first because I already have so many things on my list of daily to dos. But the next day while working on the shuffling of boxes and papers for the room project I found the little notebook in which I had begun my Gratitude Journal the last time. I'd forgotten that had survived the move from California in August of 2001. It survived because I'd had it with me those two weeks we lived on the streets of the Silicon Valley. I confess I hadn't written in it but I did keep it with me.

So, Alright already, I said to whatever Jokester had seen fit to cause me to pull it out of whatever cranny it had been tucked into for the past several years. I mean how much more blunt did I need the message to be? So that evening I began.

After ten days I can testify that I see positive effects already. It is as if my compass had been spinning endlessly and suddenly has begun to settle, a little jerky, a bit of a wide swing, but with an evident aim in a definite direction. A direction I am as eager to follow as it seems eager for me to approach. A direction that seems as much person as place.

Join us in a moment of Serenity