Life at 3 miles an Hour

It's amazing what a change of scenery will do. I highly recommend it. It's true that many will not be able to experience the extent of the change that I've been fortunate to experience, but anything is a step in the right direction. A month or so back I made a move from a years old tradition of a beachside Starbucks view to a smaller urban neighborhood caffeinated venue. The change has been good. This week I am tagging along with my wife on her conference at the happiest place on earth. No, I'm not in Cleveland...I am right in the heart of the realm of the mouse. Disney world is indeed everything that the name implies. It is another world. Many will disagree and charge me with being part of the "1 percent" and for this week I'm certainly Ok with that. After all, I am sitting here, lakeside in a gorgeous resort, typing mindlessly on my iPad, so I can't reasonably deny the charge. I could ignorantly claim that I deserve this, or I earned it ...

What began as the promise to a new day with coffee and A chocolate croissant in my new home away from home quickly turned into an hour long search for the key that would enable me to get to my caffeine refuge. It's interesting that one little piece of a specifically carved alloy can determine one's destiny. When you find the right one you can open closed doors, move inanimate objects and begin a journey to a destination that you didn't even realize was possible before turning it. I can, in a sense, become the legendary "key master" of Ghostbusters fame. So I'm looking on a new year with a sense that there are many destinations possible by the end of it and I hold the keys to many of them. I, like many of you, travel in circles where I, depending on the keys held, can influence the destinations of many lives beyond my own. As a Pastoral Artist responsible for the direction and leading of a community o' faith, the keys I choose to turn or not turn can i...

Ok... So I've been enjoying the relative peacefulness here for what, 3 weeks??? Guess who just showed up? If you've read my earlier posts you know the answer to this one. That's right... A new group of retired "women" walkers are now holding court in my upstairs sanctuary. Nice...merry Christmas to me. The week just keeps getting better and better. A few days ago our source of video fulfillment decided that it couldn't do "It's a Wonderful Life" one more time. The little red light just blinked mockingly in the void. Experience told me an the manual validated that it was time to call the Sony service man. Right...like that's going to happen. What it really means is check the papers for the best sale on a new one. There will be no repurposing, reconditioning, or redeployment for the beast. I call it the " beast" because it literally is. Lets face it, when you need a chain hoist to get it up the stairs and then a mini crane...

So it's now week 3 here and I'm pretty much settled in on my new place of inspiration. The final push has been made this morning as I finally succumbed to the chocolate croissant...exceedingly good plan. My intent for these next several weeks is actually to simply post things from the past as I wander through my archives and edit along the way for an attempt at a book during 2012. However, the spirit of the season has begun to mesh with the spirit of protest and I'm beginning to get more and more unsettled about how this is all beginning to be played out in the realm of influence that I have, that being pastoral artist. Since I live in a city where the occupy movement has had a significant presence, I am perhaps more enmeshed in these thoughts than others of my profession in other areas of the country. The best way that I can process is to write, and so I've set out to write down some of my thoughts. Many are not going to like and or agree with me and that's e...

Week 2 in my new neighborhood...I have to say that I'm still liking it. It starts off slowly and then gets busier as the morning progresses...then it's time for me to leave. It's a perfect arrangement...economic success and sanity for me all in the same morning session. As the season marches on I am trying to be more creative in finding the right mix of social and personal time. In the land of pastoral artistry, there is precious little "personal" time, yet at the same time it is essential to my role. It's a paradox of sorts. I'm sitting here in the loft area of my newly adopted hangout and contemplating the greenery of the season. I'm wondering who the first person was that thought it was a good Christmasy thing to do to hang some form of green stuff to bring out the spirit of the season. I'm sure that Wikipedia could give me some clues, I'm just too lazy to investigate. I mean really, for my own heritage remembering the birth of ...

So this morning I have finally clawed my way out of the routine and familiar and am exploring a new possible source of morning inspiration. I've left The beauty of the beachfront for the early morning serenity of a neighborhood. It's a new place actually that I've had my eye on for the past few weeks as I've driven past on my way to the familiar land of corporate caffeine. There is great promise here. The din of the countless groups of retiree's has been replaced by the friendly chatter of the baristas. The corporate bakery has been replaced by some local ventures. There are no big comfy chairs but their is a library like loft to enjoy. It seems as if most people wandering through the doors at is time of day are neighborhood people on their way to other morning destinations. Gone is the frantic rush of commuters trying to replenish for the day before the bus leaves the stop. Gone are the high school girls seeking social coolness with their frilly iced drink...

Starbucks again on a rainy morning, although I do have my sights on another space in the near future….stay tuned. I’m only really here for the view anymore. Everything else has faded for me here like the last credits of a late night movie. The coffee is not a catch. My chair is gone…and there’s only so many cheese Danish that I can consume before someone will need to break out the paddles. The community feel is gone for the most part. Take this morning for example. I stopped for gas and ended up just minutes off my intended schedule. That’s all it took for the curious space phenomenon to shift into high gear. It has always been interesting to me that while Starbucks and others like it have built an empire on creating community, when you actually come into a place, unless it’s a prearranged group, people have a specific method of insuring that they aren’t seated next to someone until absolutely necessary. Individual tables tend to be occupied, every other one, not next to eac...