Mindful

Do you know how many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I have made?  Me neither, but I suspect it’s a mighty magnanimous figure considering my personal lifetime consumption and the number prepared for kids the last decade.  The quantity climbs as I crafted two more just moments ago.  As I layered creamed peanuts onto bread today I noticed a developed ritual in my approach.  With a method of minimal strokes I hope to make evenly distributed peanut butter without tearing the bread.  A blob in the middle with scarcity at the edges is, in my determination, an inferior eating experience.  It dawned on me that even something as simple and routine as making this food can be a mindful experience.

 

Mindful is defined at dictionary.com as attentive, aware, or careful.

 

I enjoy reading texts of philosophy, health, spirituality and psychology.  The mind, body and spirit fascinate me!  So many words and wisdom arranged differently and from diverse authors come to a similar message:  when we act with intention, keeping our attention in the present, we are more content. 

 

I realize peanut butter to bread is hardly the stuff of spiritual quest, but it brought my mind to a specific place as I mulled my routineness.  I tend to look for a grand or more important action as one into which I sink my soul like music, meditation, fasting.  Indeed, all those are wonderful!  I do believe practice of specific actions like yoga and meditation hones our skills and makes us aware of our mindful abilities so that they can carry over into every day.  But, those of us who have not chosen an ordained or monastic life spend MOST of our time on regular tasks, daily routines, ordinary stuff.  We have the call to bring mindful to our often mundane:  the commute to work, answering of emails, eating lunch, carrying out the trash, attending meetings, shopping for groceries.

 

Today as I made a sandwich I tried to really see what I was doing.  I loved kids as I cut off crust.  With smooth knife strokes I thanked George Washington Carver for the boon he provided to Southern farmers with peanuts as a crop and peanut butter as a product.  Settled at the computer I searched the history of peanut butter and appreciated the Incas in South America who first grew peanuts and smashed them into tasty paste.  I learned that Carver did not patent peanut butter because he believed all food products were gifts from God.  (I suspected peanut butter was holy.)  (http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blpeanutbutter.htm)  

   

Seeing clearly is a result of being mindful.  In my admittedly conventional life I remind myself – as I wash dishes AGAIN, or pay monthly bills AGAIN, as I feel my tasks are a lesser undertaking compared to more lofty work.  Seeing clearly nourishes seeds planted in our inner sanctuary, a holy place, true and unchanging regardless of the ordained or ordinary task at hand.      

 

I want to be mindful, careful of my thoughts and actions.