there’s an oft-quoted line for couples in the hebrew book of Ruth that goes “for wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge”. so when my wife’s business bought a bigger line of previously-failing retail stores and decided to move the smaller business office up to the bigger office in the bigger city, i had a choice: stay or go. i went.
am now in my 6th month of emigration & relocation. same state, but 142 miles away. from little urbania, 2 miles from downtown, to sprawling suburbia, 16 miles to my most frequent workplace & no sidewalks.
doing my sunday shopping — from uu to humanist to quaker, forth & back. the humanist hour has the best music – modern american electric guitar, & the highest percentage (7?) of minorities, but is only once a month. the UU place has 4 sundays of old white music but the best regular (1x/month) speaker/idealogue, Rami Shapiro. the quakers got lots of quiet, which is yoga for my brain.
on the others days i try to practice the physicality of it all — i go to yoga at the Y & practice a little tm with the Friends. the yoga is the hardest physically, but easiest socially — i walk in, plop down my mat, say a couple hellos, do the work, leave. the Friends is the most difficult theologically — i’m down with the Testimonies of simplicity, equality, integrity, enjoy the plain sitting contemplation, but don’t do the spirit-talk like they do. i learned back around 40 years ago from the head of the Religious Studies department at the time who was one himself that there was such a thing as atheist quakers. i’m kind of anxious/anxietous for that discussion.