I think I’ll shift topics yet again. Although I’d like to return to Mom’s correspondence at some point, for now I feel that I need to do some work on sprituality, 12-step programs, yoga–a convergence of these. You see I’ve realized that several strands of my life are coming together in ways I never imagined. It began with the spirituality of knitting, which I spent the summer of 2006 researching; then I attended a service at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ogden in April; then I started attending Al-Anon in July. So now, being the analytical person that I am, I want to investigate the reasons I’ve come to this place: a Unitarian (we joined the UUCO last month), a yoga practitioner, a co-dependent, a knitter. Some of these labels I took on willingly, some not so much. What have I learned about myself and my place in the world? And how does this apply to my teaching, my scholarship, my service–to borrow the labels used for compiling your professional file (another activity I’m engaged in right now). And does any of this signify anything that I can write about? Can it coalesce into something meaningful beyond myself? I keep thinking it does because when I practice yoga I think about something I read in a book about co-dependency (“be grateful, be patient, believe in the positive”); when I listen to Theresa Novak preach on Sunday, I think about something I heard at an Al-Anon meeting (“you didn’t cause it, you can’t control it, and you can’t change it”); when I knit baby blankets for my sister’s babies, I sing a song we sing as we send the children off to Sunday school (“go now in peace, go now in peace, may the love of god surround you, everywhere, everywhere, you may go”); when I listen to people share their stories at an Al-Anon meeting, I remember knitting a prayer shawl for my Aunt Carol as she was dying of pancreatic cancer. Not to mention all of the looping back and forward with my husband, my mother, my children, my friends, my in-laws, my colleagues. Chatting with my dad in a Zion coffee shop about Uncle Bob; talking to Sally about co-dependency; watching Theresa dance down the aisle at church; baking cookies with Maggie; talking politics with Jake; hiking up Taylor Canyon with S; driving to Madison with Mom; drinking wine with Shelley T; chopping fruit with Shelley L; spending a week with Katy while she’s on bed-rest–something I get to do in November. These are the moments of communion I cherish.