June update

Ah, well, I'll try to do a brief update here. It's supposed to be a somewhat lighter schedule, and of course it is, but that doesn't somehow mean that things feel any slower. Maybe a little more space in our days, most evenings are free now.

Still, lots going on. Twice a month I have a week where I go to three different prison groups (Tuesday evening OSP, Friday evening Coffee Creek Medium, Monday evening Coffee Creek Minimum). Tonight is that Monday. We had a lot of meetings this week and weekend, and I end up taking notes and typing up minutes for many of them. There are some interesting things happening. In the mean time, the abbots have taken off for a well-deserved vacation, and so we will be handling things here for the next couple of weeks. Their apartment up in the attic is getting remodeled, new carpet, linoleum, and wall repairs and painting, while they are gone.

Two of the meetings yesterday had to do with planning for fall (when I'm not even going to be here, still figuring on going away to Tassajara). One is putting together a seminary class on Issues of Leadership, to include things like ethics, group dynamics and teaching. The other is to plan a kind of inservice day for Dharma School teachers. Both are new. We have several people in the sangha with masters degrees in areas related to these topics, and I think it will be fun to participate in this planning. The actual inservice should be held before I leave, and I may have some role in that.

I do have a couple of papers to write for the seminary class I took this spring. As always, I have a couple of ideas for them, but haven't yet managed to get myself to start them. Need to do this soon.

Today I'm helping put brunch together, since Gyokuko is out of town. Then I'm hoping to meet with a friend this afternoon, and as mentioned, prison tonight. Tomorrow morning I'm meeting with another friend about house-sitting while she is out of town, and after that we're back into the work week. Some of these weekends just fly by.