Morning Mindfulness

I don't know that I have ever taken out the trash mindfully, but today I did.  Sort of.

 

I know about mindfulness but, as with so many things, what I know does not translate into what I do.  Yesterday, I picked up a little book on mindfulness, which is probably why . . . the trash.

 

The book contains an introduction by Jon Kabat-Zinn, whom I think of as the father of the modern mindfulness movement in the west; at least one of the writers is from Oxford University; and it sets out an eight week plan ~ just matching the time our congregation has left.  Seven weeks plus the Thanksgiving Week after our closing services, when I will probably be numbed by exhaustion.  So it should be a good book for me.

 

This morning, on my pretend day off, I had imagined myself lying around in bed, reading the introductory chapters.  But at 7:15, I realized that I had forgotten about the trash, and leaped out of bed and made a dash for the window.  The garbage collectors were a bit late, so I hurried into a sweatshirt and running shoes and ran downstairs.

 

And then I mindfully took out the trash.

 

Remembering that it was down my own front steps that I tumbled nearly two years ago and broke the ankle that still hurts when it rains, and thus moving carefully.

 

Grateful that the garbage collectors come and pick up trash and recycling.

 

Recalling autumn afternoons with my grandmother, who burned the trash, hers and ours, in an outdoor brick incinerator, a structure which always held a certain fascination for me.

 

A better beginning to the day than yesterday, when I was so pre-occupied by thoughts of the coming morning at church that I took my blood pressure medication twice, both before and after my shower, after which I had to sit on the toilet lid and google overdose information.  (I take so little that the primary side effect of times two has been the many, many trips to that toilet and others in the 27 hours since, as my body relives itself of the extra water.)

 

But here I am, writing and eating my poached eggs.

 

It is not so easy, mindfulness in 2015 America.