Thinking about it…

Week One

My friend and I met for dinner at a restaurant called “Fresh”, which features healthy (mainly vegan) food and juices/drinks. It’s near the U of T so it has a youthful energy but there were some middlers and even an older lady who sat next to us and enjoyed her veggie burger platter.

Getting There

Well fed, we walked up the road to our destination. It was further than we anticipated, but the exercise did us good. When we saw the building at #215 it was an ordinary house, not a four-storey building. Hmm.

So my friend checked the email and realized that we had gone to 215 S Road – and we needed to get to 215 S Avenue. We turned around and headed south. At Bloor Street (the main east-west artery of Toronto) we texted the coach telling her what happened and said we were at Bloor so shouldn’t be too long.

Guess what? The street numbers at that intersection were in the high 700’s. We walked a bit then hopped on a streetcar (tram) and rode the rest of the way. Ironically, the building we sought was a five minute walk from my office.

You can make the obvious conclusions, but there are spiritual truths here as well. At least, for my friend and me (yes, me is correct, not I. Know how to check? Take the other person out. At least for I? No, At least for me).

Spiritual lessons

• don’t make assumptions – verify the source
• if in doubt, ask someone who knows the answer
• don’t follow someone unless you’re sure they know where they are going – check against the source material if uncertain

Introductions

Andrea, the coach, did a super job of explaining how the group would work. Each of us introduced ourselves and shared some things with a craft: cutting words and pictures out of magazines and decorating our name cards. I expected it to be kind of silly but it was a lot of fun – and each of us took to the task with gusto.

The Fear Factor

We were warned that, at some point over the next five weeks, we would want to just stop. Say ‘this is too hard’ or ‘I don’t want to/can’t do this anymore’. Interestingly enough, this made me want to press in even more. Was I ready to face my fears and embrace the challenge?

We’ll see…