**LOVE**

So here I am on the third day of my three day Eat, Pray, Love retreat.
LOVE - what a loaded word.
Love really is more of an action than anything else, so how can I contemplate this while alone in retreat from the world? Love implies there being others, implies connections and embraces and sacrifices and more than one alone.
So, my love day is not exactly the same as the lovely episode described in the Eat, Pray, Love book, where the author falls in love in Bali with a wonderful man.
My day of love seems to be about, first of all - self love.
I do what I need to do to love myself, so that I can love others.
I journaled about these ideas, and came up with images that really run the gamut of kinds of love, love for children, animals, art, perhaps even love for ideas.
I know that I love to read.
I love to collage.
I love to meditate and walk in nature.
but love is really more of a verb, not a thought.
"How well did I love?" -- that will be a question all of us ask when we are facing the end of our lives.
Sometimes I love my children so much it hurts, that I feel like I didn't do or say the right things at the right time.
Loving ones' children is like this, and it stretches us beyond what we thought stretchable.
Loving a spouse for 24 years, as well - that is a long long time to pledge love to one single person, and we have had our ups and downs. and after lots of downs this year, we are actually in a very nice place right now - both learning to love and respect the other in new ways.
I also have friends that I love very much, whose friendship I cherish and need.
Friends who hold me together when I am falling apart. . .
There are many kinds of love - too many for one day. I need a week to just journal and think about love.
no, a lifetime.
hopefully, I will have a lifetime of love.

Day Two - PRAY

So I am on day two of my Eat Pray Love retreat.
PRAY.
This morning I got up pretty early, though not as early as the 3:30 A.M. time that Elizabeth Gilbert had to rise at the Ashram she was studying at, to meditate.
The problem with meditation is there are always uninvited thoughts barging into the quietness that is being created.
I imagine sitting on the banks of a still still lake, and the thoughts are ripples that I let slowly fade out.
This helps until the next thought, one second later.
Well, it's all a process.
Today I will meditate a few more times, do some journey work, and make more pages.
Also here high in the mountains we got over a foot of snow last night - I find myself just gazing out the window, watching the chunks of wet snow fall off the pine trees that surround this cabin. That is a form of meditation, too, I suppose.
Praying is really an act of awareness, as much as anything else.
as is making these Pray pages for my journal. . . .

Eat**Pray**Love

That beautiful fruit was my breakfast this morning - let me explain:
I have been reading this wonderful, wonderful memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love; it is about a year she spent living in Rome, India, and Bali just learning to be - she ate her way through Rome, learned meditation in an Indian Ashram, and fell in love in Bali.
I am inspired by her example to take a retreat - some time off to pursue pure pleasure, enlightenment, and bliss. I don't have a year, but I do have three days.
So right now, I am totally alone in a cabin high in the Rockies near Winterpark, Colorado. I am surrounded by snow and pine trees. This is DAY ONE of my eat, pray, love retreat, this is the day dedicated to good eating.
TO totally enjoy the pleasures that nature gave us in our food - today I am going to prepare three healthy wonderful meals, and enjoy the process of the preparation, the eating, and even the cleaning up after.
I made this fruit plate for breakfast - drizzled in honey.
For lunch - fresh eggs with mushrooms and monterey jack, and for dinner, I got a grass-fed filet mignon. I am totally dedicating this whole day to eating the best I can, to enjoying the beauty and health of the food as well, to knowing my body appreciates good nourishing things.
Today the only goal is to eat well - I also took a long walk, and I worked in my journal, and I will read a bit, nap a bit, etc.
But the focus today is on the FOOD.
Tomorrow, the day is PRAY - that will be much harder and austere. SO I am really enjoying the bliss of the food and luxury today.
Here is the first journaling pages about this wonderful day - and do look for the upcoming journal pages on Pray and Love!