Coming Down to Earth

I have just spent a wonderfully stimulating and spiritual week on Star Island, off the coast of New Hampshire, on the Lifespan Religious Education conference. The setting was beautiful (even if the weather was about twice as hot as I would have liked), the workshop I was attending (on using social media intelligently to spread the Unitarian word, led by the dynamic Peter Bowden http://www.uugrowth.com/  ) was exciting and stimulating and insightful, and I have made many new UU friends, which is lovely.

Now I am home, having slept the clock round, and work and domesticity beckon. My heart and half of my mind are still on Star, but there are so many things I need to do here. E-mails to respond to, reports and a newsletter to write, shopping, washing and ironing to do. So I need to re-focus.

As so often, I turn to the Quaker Advices and Queries for advice. And I find two sentences which give me the answers I need:

"Seek to know an inward stillness, even amid the activities of daily life." and

"Be aware of the spirit of God at work in the ordinary activities and experience of your daily life."

These give me the power to come back down from the spiritual high I have been on for the last week, and to re-connect with the mundane and everyday tasks of my life, and to do so happily, without regret. I can look back on my week on Star Island with joy, and with a little wistfulness, but here is where I belong, where I must do "the something I can do."