Setting Out

Just setting out on our Professional Development Leave and beginning to develop ... we arrived safe and sound yesterday in Toronto and celebrated Emily's birthday with her and John at an almost-locavore restaurant called Earth.  Barry, the adventurous one, had homemade fettucini with rabbit; I had smoked chicken with Ontario rutabaga puree, onions, and cherries preserved from last year's harvest.  Today we drove over to Prince Edward County, east of Toronto along the shore of Lake Ontario.  It's lovely here and the towns on the lake are small and quaint.

The view across to Lake Ontario from tonight's B and B

We are beginning our routine of study, prayer, sleep, and recreation.  One sentence from near the beginning of The Artist's Way got underlined yesterday:  "As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected."  Gentle but powerful; sounds like Holy Spirit to me.  This morning, sitting in Future Bakery in Toronto, I began the first chapter, "Recovering a Sense of Safety."  It has the reader take a look at the old tapes that play in our heads and tell us we are no good at what we do or who we are... very powerful stuff.  Not too late for anyone to work along with this course.  It might be fun to compare notes in the fall.

One practice we are beginning is reading to each other.  We have a copy of Steig Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and hope to begin it today.  Otherwise I am still reading a history of cancer called The Emperor of All Maladies and Barry is reading what looks to me like an AP History Textbook, called From Dawn to Decadence.  We are enjoying the quiet.