What Feeds Your Soul?

Our interim pastor likes to ask this question of people: “What feeds your soul?” I love this. It’s a good way to cut through the chit-chat and get to know someone. Asking this can also help someone who might be struggling to meet other’s expectations instead of their own, or reveal parts of their personality they might not have realized existed.

A few years into working as a medical transcriptionist, I had a conversation with another woman whose child went to our local elementary school. She had just finished the same training course I had taken and wanted to know how I liked working from home. For me, medical transcription was a dream job. To her, it looked more like a nightmare. She was very outgoing and people-oriented. The thought of working alone for eight hours straight was terrifying, and I wondered why she hadn’t considered that outcome before she took the training course. Being stuck at home by herself all day certainly wasn’t going to feed her soul.

Someone snapped this photo at the Bernina Meet and Greet on Monday. I borrowed it from the quilt store’s Facebook page:

I must be pontificating about pillowcases. The lady in yellow was my first student and I probably used her pillowcase as the class sample.

I looked at that picture, and the one Sunnie took of me at the plant sale, and thought how interesting that there were two photos within days of each other in which I was doing something I love. Very different activities, to be sure, but ones that feed my soul. And if I’m going to be thorough about it, I’ll throw this one in, too:

This was taken at the wedding of my friend Susan’s daughter. I am playing Susan’s mother’s piano, which resides in our church. I get to play it every Sunday. Music feeds my soul. So does gardening, and so do sewing, knitting, and other textile arts.

That is your philosophy seminar for today.

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In other news . . .

The husband got a phone call from Liberty Mutual yesterday. Apparently, reporting an insurance company to the state insurance commissioner puts the fear of God into them. Not only are they sending the check for the $6000 they owe us, they are sending another check for the interest that accumulated from them not sending it when they said they would.

And after realizing that no one from the freight company was going to respond to my e-mail or call and ask when I wanted the machine delivered, I called them on Tuesday and set up a delivery for tomorrow. I also let the store I purchased the machine from know about the issues with the freight company so they could let Juki know. (The machine was shipped directly from Juki’s warehouse in New Jersey.) I need to clean the garage before the machine gets here so we have a place to set it up.

I started putting plants into the garden Tuesday morning but had to stop and meet the driver from the Food Bank at our community center. He came out to get the leftover plants from the sale. The Food Bank was delighted to get them and we were delighted to pass them on. It rained hard yesterday morning and I had an appointment in town, so I didn’t work in the garden. I am still ahead of schedule, though, and I should have everything in the garden by the end of the weekend. I have three flats of beans and one flat of corn started in the greenhouse. They won’t take long to germinate and get big enough to plant.

I picked up two solar-powered motion detector lights in town yesterday. These can be mounted low to the ground on stakes. I am going to put them in the garden and aim one at the peas and one at the rows of broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. If the forest animals want to sidle up to the salad bar, they are going to have to do so in full-spectrum spotlights.

Yesterday morning, I said to the husband—only half-jokingly—that I would see him again at the end of the summer. We’ve reached that time of the year when we’re together and awake for about 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening. The poor guy had to pour concrete at 6:30 yesterday morning. It is getting harder and harder to schedule pours because the batch plants are so busy.