It’s green here for a reason!  Torrential rain all day and it looks as though it will not be letting up for the next few days.  The good news is that my sunscreen will be particularly effective today.

So it was an indoor day of reading and talking.  Deep honest conversations that sort of rocked my view of what I thought I knew and what really is.  How I want to feel and how I honestly feel.  The truth is, I don’t feel much like writing today.  They say that the first few weeks of a sabbatical is a time to detox.  Staring things down can be painful.  That it is voluntary keeps the escape door open for me.  Reading helps.

This is what I learned today.

Define what you value.

I’ll skip to the list:

1. Deep down, what really matters to me?
2. What relationships do I want to build?
3. What do I want my life to be about?
4. How do I feel most of the time?
5. What kinds of situations make me feel most vital?

Application:

I loved this story…

“When Irena Sendler was a 17 year old living in Poland, her father, a doctor, told her: “If you see someone drowning, you must jump in and save them.” When the Nazis invaded her town during World War II, this value of helping that she held so dearly led her to shelter and feed her Jewish neighbor.

As the war progressed, Sendler moved on to creating, with her like-minded friends, thousands of false papers to aid Jewish families in escaping from the notorious Warsaw Ghetto.  From there, disguised as a social worker checking for typhus, she started smuggling children out of the ghetto herself.

It was terrifying, but she never wavered, not even when the Gestapo arrested her and sentenced her to death.  She later described a sense of relief at the news; at last she would be free from the fear that had come with the brave path she had chosen.

Then a guard helped her escape and go into hiding.  Yet, instead of protecting herself for the remainder of the war, Sendler remained true to her values and continued, at enormous risk, to work to save Jewish children – at least 2,500 in all.  She stayed the course when it would have been far easier, and safer, to duck and run.  But Sendler knew that without action, a value is just an aspiration, rather than the way we really are.”

The questions in red are surprisingly hard for me to answer.  Especially #4.  I’m dancing but I’m not hearing the music.  I hope, in the end of all of this I can hear the music again.

They say that you need to be honest in your writing.  I’m hoping no one reads this.