ORDINARY LIFE - Thoughts and Ideas to Help You Live a Happier Life

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Summary for March 15, 2020

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Dear Folks -

Wow! What an experience we had “in” Ordinary Life this week. As you know, we did not meet in person but the class was live-streamed. I received a large number of both texts and e-mails about your experience. Many of the responses were about the difficulty or inability you had seeing the presentation slides. They will be on the website AND we will have resolved this issue by this coming Sunday.

We are not certain how long these “digital meetings” will go on. If we comply with the CDC’s recommendations, quite a while. St. Paul’s is hard at work creating ways we can stay connected not only for worship but also for the wide variety of other gatherings we have. As I indicated, the presentation slides issues will have been resolved by this coming week.

I did receive word today that Michael Morwood has had to cancel his scheduled trip to the states from Australia. We have begun investigation into whether to try to schedule a video meeting with him at the time we have him scheduled, or wait and try to reschedule at a later date. He is suggesting sometime in the Fall. That may or may not be a possibility. Stay tuned.

As for this week in Ordinary Life, Holly Hudley and I co-taught a conversation we called -

Can You Hear Me Now: The Art of Sacred Dialogue

Both of us prepare written notes for these times together and, then, seldom stick to what we wrote. I am including copies of the texts that we had in front of us on the website. As well as the audio version of the time and the presentation slides - that you were unable to see.

We are continuing to use the “four immeasurables of love” to guide the construction of our talks. This week we used “compassion” as the foundation for what we had to say. We did begin with a humorous piece of how to use one’s reactions to the concern about the virus to determine one’s Enneagram number.

My advice, for what it is worth, is to take sensible precautions, listen to the CDC rather than cable news - and not too much of that, keep calm and carry on. Historically pandemics have brought out the worst in people, not the best. We live in a relational world and the practice of conscious compassion is critically needed. I ended our time by quoting Francis of Assisi, “When you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received - only what you have given: a full heart, enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage."

That is a brief summary of the talk offered in Ordinary Life. The audio version contains all the asides and ad libs.

You can read or download the texts from which we spoke, view the presentation slides, listen to the audio of the talk and/or watch the video of the talk using the links below.