During these Covid times, how do we solitude-seeking-folks  organize our weeks?  I’ve always liked a rhythm, which of course has changed over the years. When I was teaching, the weekly routine was easy; into the classroom I’d go every day--being sick was never worth it, as every teacher knows. Weekends were spent with family and preparing for the next week in the classroom. 
    After I retired I developed other busy, weekly routines. Now with Covid, my days have embraced a comfortable rhythm of silence, solitude, and simplicity, which I’m hoping won’t change after we all get vaccinated and are out and about again. In fact, at my age, I don’t want to be out and about very much, although I’d jump at the chance to go to a restaurant or visit a museum with a friend. 
 
 At the moment, here’s my simple weekly routine.  
 
Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, at home with no regular social plans. I try to keep the days free for me to choose everything I do. 
Tuesday, lunch at a friend’s house (we have created a tiny bubble); volunteer at a food pantry, providing groceries to seniors; and then grocery shopping on my way home. 
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Friday, a day with friends; chatting with my sister and others, Zooming with teachers and others; walking with friends. 
 
Saturday, a day at home with my husband
Sunday, a church day. As best I can, I treat it as a Sabbath Day. Sometimes a chat with a friend. 
 
That‘s the week; a simple routine, with plenty of times for silence and solitude. 

​I’ve been back a week. Jet lag taken care of, a pound lost, porch furniture put away; jigsaw puzzle started, library book read, friends visited; I’m fully immersed in life here. All good.
     I miss, however, interrupting my early morning walk along the Arno to stand at a bar to sip that first early morning cappuccino.
      One more thing, I love my early morning, black American coffee. 

    I am participating in an on-line course entitled ‘Growing a Rule of Life,’ sponsored by the Society of St. John the Evangelist, as Episcopal monastic order in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although I refrain from specifically religious or Christian comments in this blog, I think that the question and suggestions posed by Br. Curtis today speaks to all of us looking for silence, solitude and simplicity.
    How can you find and maintain a healthier balance in your life?
    First, have beauty in your life, regardless of the challenges that face you. He suggests we consciously take beauty into our daily diet. Living in country I’m apt to take the beauty around me for granted, even on my walk. Today I will take in beauty.
    Next, every day plan something enjoyable in your life. Again, I take those moments for granted. Today I will plan something enjoyable.
    Do not ‘dis’ or disrespect yourself. There are so many way we can be negative about ourselves. Today I will not ‘dis’ myself.
    He also suggests we part with something every day. “Even in a monastery we accumulate things and I find it enormously liberating – I travel lighter – by parting with something every day. It will also change your relationship to things, where you’re aware that you’re stewarding something for as long as it’s helpful, and when it’s time to let it go, you part with it. Not cling, but part with it.” Today I will get rid of something.
    Finally, Br. Curtis urges us to create a Sabbath habit. Taking time away from busyness doesn’t have to be for a day but for a period of time. I’m pretty go at this now that I’m retired, but I can feel I’m on the run. Today I will be conscious of a Sabbath moment. 

Here’s a new, simple way to getting a good night’s sleep, to sleeping through the night, to at least not waking up and staying awake. Eliminate the idea that in the middle of the night you need to know what time it is. Hide your digital clock; turn it around to face the wall; cover it with your bathrobe; get rid of it entirely if you don’t use it during the day.

      I discovered this little trick to a better night’s sleep when our clock stopped giving accurate time. It was getting ahead of itself in its clock-like way, which was most annoying since I was counting on it every minute, day and night. So I unplugged it. But then what? No instant way to know time, especially in the middle of the night. After a week of sleeping without those red numbers lighting up the room, however, I realized that I didn’t need to know that it was 3 AM. More importantly, when I did awake in the night, I noticed that I was going back to sleep more quickly. Knowing the time was no longer one of those little triggers waking up my mind.

      My phone on my bed table is now my clock. In the early morning, when I sense that it is time to get up, I take a peek, and guess what? It is always somewhere around 5:30, which is when I like to get going. Um, maybe I don’t even need my phone. My body knows.    

Where does the time go? That wonderful cliché says it all, or more to the point, says it often. I try to post every other day, but that doesn’t always happen. My last post, on August 17th , was on my brother’s 67th birthday. Where does the time go? Already he’s three days older; so am I; so are you, whoever you are out there reading this. What’s my point? Maybe I’m just observing. No, more than that, I’m thinking about how I have spent those three days, what I have done, and how I feel about it.

      I’ve done some sitting around, working on a jigsaw puzzle, happy as can be. I’ve made it through the day safely and in good health. I’ve made progress toward a personal goal, namely working on the memoir I’m writing about my mom. I’ve done something for someone else by visiting some elderly friends.  

     How has the time gone? It’s always a good day, or three, when I can get up in the morning and be grateful for all that I can do, and for the possibilities of the new day.

As I’ve mentioned before, for me a routine is fundamental to the success of this experiment in living in Florence, even if it’s only for two weeks. I strive for a routine of daily living, with leisure and long and short term purpose, not a fast-paced, tourist itinerary that is part of vacation travel. Of course, a schedule is important for wherever I live. I know I’m on the right track when I feel contentment with what I’m doing at the moment, when I’m not thinking excessively about what I’m going to do next, and when I’m creating meaning as I go along. Meaning, which is essential to a life well lived, appears in the particular work I do, in the experiences I have, and in my general feeling of well-being. Inner contentment; we know when we have it.

     Of course routine will vary but this morning it was pretty much as I like it here. At 7 AM I stopped by S. Trinita and enjoyed a half hour of silence before mass began. Then I left and walked along the Arno and over Ponte alla Carraia for my early morning cappuccino. Back to the apartment to check email and then to library to write.

     It was cloudy when I first started out, and raining while I was at the library. Now the sun is working it’s way through. I’ve eaten lunch and will go out for a walk, maybe stop at a museum. Such is my day with enough of a routine to feel purposeful. Three more days and then I’ll be home to live a different purposeful routine.

1/29/14 Here’s today’s ponder as I sit on the deck knitting and watching the sea. I suppose I could say that I’m setting some kind of intention to experience silence, solitude and simplicity, but that’s not true, at least the intention part. I’m just letting it all flow over me. I’m not at yoga.

     At lunch the other day a friend, who has known me since high school, said that she considers me a very intentional person, that I set out to do something and I do it. She used the example of setting intention at the start of her yoga class. I understood what she was saying, but I wouldn’t use intention to describe how I go about doing what I do. To my way of thinking, intentionality implies a somewhat lock-step, mental plan for achieving specific, concrete goals; and that just isn’t the way I see my life from the inside. I’d say I operate from a spiritual flow more than an intentional time clock.

    What I accomplish is driven by my mission. Example: Each day at the cottage I hope/plan to complete a monthly chapter for the book I’m writing (today was May 2001). Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn’t. But it is the reason that I am writing the book that keeps me moving forward, chapter after chapter, even when I’d rather knit and watch the ocean. It is my mission to inspire, affirm and encourage others to find meaning in their lives that drives me. I suppose I could call that intention, but the idea of mission flows deeper into the arena of longing, which is a far cry from putting a check on to-do list. 

    It’s a matter of semantics. But for sure, I wouldn’t be able to ponder this with extended periods of silence, solitude and simplicity. ‘Very grateful.”

I’ve been thinking about the simple things and routines that I posted about the other day. Simple they may be, but more than that, they offer stability, which is also something I strive for. Things that are stable in my life, offer a sense of simplicity; what is simple, offers stability. They go hand in hand. Case in point.

     Saturday some friends are coming for supper. The menu I have chosen (chili) is not a simple one as far as preparation is concerned. (Simple in this case would be takeout.) But it feels simple because I know how to put it all together. I have the ‘stability’ to cook the chili and rice, gather the condiments, make the cornbread, toss the salad, set the table and clean up afterwards.

    I’m not saying that simplicity is the only way. In order to get there we often have to go through complexity. I’m reminded of Piaget’s observations that learning involves a continual pattern of disequilibrium and equilibrium.