(You know about the "second hiker"?: it is not safe to hike alone in bear country. You should always hike with someone who is just a little slower than you!)  :surprised:

Right now I am going through a rough patch because I exhausted my savings and my present job training won't be completed bI efore January 30. I am skimming along on my basic income that I managed to pay into when I had better years.

So, yesterday I went on a long bus safari  to a Wal-mart across town that has the best prices. I bought basic food for the rest of the month, but felt tempted to get a sweet. I resisted it, but then while waiting for the bus caved in and bought a small pack of cookies from the stand near there.

I prayed apology and felt the Lord's reassurance that I should not  be so anxious. I confessed my sin of doubt and anxiety and my sin of giving in to the temptation to buy a sweet that I did not need.

While I was praying that, as I walked back to the bus station feeling bad, right at that very moment, my eyes fell to the ground, and there was a penny. Of course there are always pennies and small coins on the ground, that is not unusual, but something was odd about this one and I picked it up, and it was a 1956 wheat penny. I put it in my pocket and felt simultaneous silly and loved while I wait through this period of contemplation.

Then today another blessing, an aquaintance called me. I had prevailed upon  her to take my orchids (a dozen plants) for me while I had everything in storage, waiting for my lease to become available, and I was waiting for some warmer weather to start trundling the orchids back to my apartment, if they had survived. (Lots of people don't like to keep orchids because they worry about killing them, and I have lost plants when I traveled in the past)

This lady called me and said "Hey! I have a day off and it is a great time to get all these orchids over there!" and I found that not only had she not killed them, they are thriving. Fully half have budding spikes and will be blooming in another month or two. She told me all she did was follow my directions to keep them out of sunlight and she did put them out on the patio when it rained and was 60F out, but I certainly never expected to see so many all ready to bloom!

We didn't know each other real well, but we have common work interests, and so it was a treat to spend the day getting so much done and having lunch at an all-you-can-eat buffet she did not know about. I showed her my dried orchid blossoms (my reason for having the orchid habit) and we shared a lot of ideas for future work.

She described to me her dream, which is almost exactly mine, except she probably has the real estate savvy to actually accomplish it: to form a boardinghouse style community for older, not-yet-retired women.  

Blessings abound. We both work in hospice care with the dying and often this means being in touch with the middle-aged relatives who are facing all the emotional upheaval of wondering about their own futures while relying on people like us to ease those last months for their elderly loved ones.

It seems that the Lord is telling me he is busy putting the plan together and I need to be patient and relax just a little longer.

The Catholic church grew strong roots when the monasteries emerged out of the chaos of the fall of Rome, and once again  we are looking to ways we can peacefully survive in communities, living frugal contemplative lives for the Glory of God and all that he does for us....