4 days left.

I realized this morning, after making some calls to potential employers, and finally finishing the hardwood floors in the hallway, that I have only four days left to complete the course for UniED!! Wish me luck.

before

after

And den:

Before (but after the last "after")

after (but after the second "before")

It feels good to finish things. So, seeing as how I finished a things today, I’m feeling pretty good. Yesterday I went with Ted to Silverstar mountain, where there’s a small ski-town at the top. We’re building and installing cabinets up there, and it looks so nice (the cabinets and the snow-capped peak)!

I’ve been listening to a great band called “Monsters of Folk“. Kris passed their music on to Ted, who gave me the CD to listen to…and I been listening since! I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’m down with their musics – the chill vibe, the varied range of style, content, and composition – it’s svet.

Ted and I have an ongoing conversation/debate about coffee. It all stemmed from the gifts my mom brought back from Karim. See, k-money (as he is sometimes known), sent along some intelligentsia coffee. This is very nice coffee. However, the beans were dry (being a light roast coffee), and Ted was NOT down. He insisted that beans had to be oily to be fresh. I didn’t think it was true, but then it has a certain logic to it: if the beans are exposed to air for along time, the oil’d oxidize or something, so old beans’d lack the oil that fresh ones have. Still, the roast date was recent, and the beans tasted fresh, so I was confuse. luckily, wikipedia answered our debate. This is not the main point of my mentioning this discussion. The point is that I wanted to open a coffee shop in Cambodia, and wouldn’t it be fun to get into the roasting as well? So I think we’re going to find some green beans and try out home-roasting. then if it’s cool we can go commercial! Haha – somehow I don’t see the commercial side panning out, but the smell of fresh-roasted coffee in the house’d be cool. N’est pas?

Baha'i ringstone-symbol on the cover of my prayerbook.

I’ve been praying a lot lately – and it’s been good times for my soul. I felt the sting of unemployment yesterday (not the financial kind) – when I vented my frustrations over receiving no reply from various applications which I’d sent out. I am no stranger to this non-reply, as it happened in Cambodia as well, still, it’s never good. my thoughts went from being frustrated, to realizing that I’m waay too hung-up on the results of my actions, and not concerned enough with the actions themselves: had I been searching for jobs daily? Had I been sending applications to all reasonable jobs? Had I been really concerned in my actions, to validate a frustration in my thoughts. The answer of course was no. Through some prayers, I’ve found myself able to be detached from the results, and focus on the hustle.

I’m pretty interested in studying the mental mechanics of prayer. Really, the effect of just saying the prayer on the person saying it is tremendous, and it’d be interesting to know the whys and hows of prayers operation. Take this prayer, for example:

O God! Refresh and gladden my spirit. Purify my heart. Illumine my powers. I lay all my affairs in Thy hand. Thou art my Guide and my Refuge. I will no longer be sorrowful and grieved; I will be a happy and joyful being. O God! I will no longer be full of anxiety, nor will I let trouble harass me. I will not dwell on the unpleasant things of life.

O God! Thou art more friend to me than I am to myself. I dedicate myself to Thee, O Lord.

– ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

(Compilations, Baha’i Prayers, p. 150)

A lot of the newfangled pseudo-spiritual positive-thinking movements use repetition of positive statements to aid in energizing oneself, and to maintain focus on a goal. Prayer seems to me to be doing some of that stuff as well (while, of course doing loads more). Let me be honest, just saying that prayer lifts me up, and makes me feel better. It’s incredible! how does it work so well?

These things and more, I wonder upon. Well, I have run out of time for writing blog posts, as I need to finish this course…but we will finish this discourse sometime in the future! (maybe December 1, maybe earlier!). Either way, I’d love to hear some thoughts on prayer, theories on the mechanics, insights into the spiritual, philosophical, or psychological, or even, if you’d like to hire me to install hardwood in your home. 😉

Haha!

Peace friends.