Appreciations

Now I am starting to feel that I am settling back in to the schedule here. Until today it felt like the different parts of my body - my spine, my lungs, my ribs, my shoulders, my legs, my hara - were not functioning as a harmonious whole while I was sitting, and of course trying to make it happen didn't make it happen. On the positive side, I have noticed that my time away had helped me with the emotional problems I was having before I went; not that they have gone, but they don't have the same weight now.
I often find that there is a virtuous circle involved in settling or paying attention - I am more open to noticing small things that affirm the joyfulness of existence, and that noticing, and allowing that to be a part of my experience, lends itself to more openness and more settling.
At the beginning of our Senior Staff meetings, we go around the group and express our appreciation for something. Today I had no trouble thinking of something: this morning during soji I had seen someone, a person who comes regularly in the morning but does not live here, who was carrying the waste and recycling bins from a bathroom. What I noticed was the look of contentment on his face, and I thought, wow, here is a person who gets up very early in the morning to sit, and is cleaning a bathroom, which he is in no way obligated to do, and enjoying himself. How could that not be inspiring?