I'm very busy, and engaged in all the stuff I'm doing, which means I don't feel so compelled to write. Sorry. But here's your quote of the week, from the Peace Corps application:

"Please note that married Applicants planning to serve without his/her spouse will be required by the Peace Corps to provide a notarized letter from the spouse acknowledging awareness of their application."

The sangha had a lovely retreat down at Vajrapani last week, though at the speed we're normally going in life, two days (give or take) is just enough time to catch our breath, and not really enough time to slow down. But I should be up at Zen Center for three weeks in July again, and that is enough time to slow down.

We were minus a few people who chose not to come: one guy working, another with a sick cat, other people, who knows. So we have all this stuff going on. But one woman came, after a month of doing hospice care for the woman who raised her, and didn't check her phone or anything--her aunt could have died over the weekend. And one guy's father is sick, and he did leave after the first day when his father got worse. As my teacher pointed out, there's always something going on. There's always a reason not to do something: not to take that class, call that girl, make that phone call, fill out that application, buy those plane tickets (or, more dramatically, go to my grandmother's funeral). We're always busy. Practice means to make conscious, often uncomfortable choices according to what's really important to us; as Katagiri Roshi said, "Practice means that we mindfully participate in life." We step up and go beyond our habits and conditioning, to choose differently, in favor of the relationships and connections and deep commitments of our lives.