A Fallow Year

It has been a year since I last posted anything on this blog.  I did not plan to be away that long, but it has been the appropriate choice for many reasons.  Like the field that a farmer leaves alone, untouched by cultivation for a year, a lot has been going on, but not visibly.

My secular job has been in great turmoil over the last twelve months.  The company fired 10% of the staff, the executive director for more than two decades retired, my immediate boss left, a previous boss and mentor retired, and a new executive director has begun.  Most of the structure of those 40 plus hours a week has been torn apart, and there has been a lot of dysfunctional behavior.  Unfortunately, some of that was my own behavior.

In consultation with my spiritual director, I have been writing about job related and other issues privately, mostly in my journal.  The journal provides a way to record what is going on, to gain a perspective, to begin sorting through and to decide what to do.  The experiences have been too raw, to personal, for public writing and reflection.  The time may be coming to begin exploring the spiritual issues in this public way, but that is not clear yet.

If you follow my other blog, Labyrinth by the Bay, you will know that I have continued to write there.  The focus is on photographing, evaluating, and learning about the many plants growing in that garden.  It has been a place of respite, of finding surprise and delight, of noticing details that keep me grounded in the present, concrete world.  Caring for those plants provides a healing unmatched by anything else.  I thank God for that ongoing source of healing.