Calm
Yesterday was all the delights of our family Christmas - without many of the benefits of sleep. Today?
I had wondered many times up to yesterday whether I had made a good plan. Travel to Montreal on Christmas morning - at 6:30 am?
It actually all worked out surprisingly well, except, of course, for much of any sleep between the midnight mass and rising at 3:30 am to get ready to go. And we left much too early because there was no traffic at all on the way to Union, so arrived before it was even open. It hadn’t occurred to me if I was there before 5:30 am it would be locked up for the night. But the train departed on time and arrived on time, and I managed to meditate and get some sleep, both, on the way there, and we had a beautiful Christmas dinner together.
By 6 pm I was ready for a good night’s sleep. I think I fell asleep by 7 pm and didn’t get up to meditate until 7 am, something of a personal record recently.
It is so completely quiet here in the hotel in the morning of what used to be known as the Feast of Stephen. It is startling, really, how utterly peaceful it is, and so very welcome.
It’s the 6th day of my two week holiday, and the first day that I have really had to savour the quiet without the anxiety about whether everything was going to go well with Christmas Eve and Christmas.
Presence has a different feel from the happy busy of yesterday, yet still, somehow, related.