“The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them." - Parker Palmer

I sat around a campfire in zero degree temperature the other night with a bunch of folk in the blue mountains. I nearly didn’t go out. I mean... zero degrees, come on! Hell, we had snow up here the other week. And it’s been a long time since I sat around a campfire so the memory of how great it is wasn’t strong in  me. And I’m up to season 2 of Big Love which is getting really interesting so I was tempted to stay on the couch. I love my couch. But it’s a dangerous place. In fact I’m in the middle of writing a new song called “My Couch, My Grave.” But that’s another story. So something in me got me out into the night. Okay, not something in me. Someone outside of me, namely my wife. In her beautiful, quietly inspiring way she suggested we go and join a bunch of people around a fire to connect and reflect. So off we went to the Katoomba Community Gardens. It was a wonderful evening. In this speedy, impatient world where fast is the new slow, and manic is the new fast, it takes something to disconnect from technology and task and entertainment. Just stop and take a breath, in the company of others. I’m not saying my mind didn’t wander back to the couch now and then. Man I am so loving Big Love Series 2, and a few times I did wonder how long I’d have to stay to be polite and appropriately soulful before I could get back to the telly. But then I remembered it wasn’t about being polite. And I was free to stay or go, and it was really just a question of what I wanted. And it struck me; these people around this fire are real. And Bill and his three wives are characters on TV, and anyway, I can watch them anytime, but campfires with real live human beings are rare. So I stayed til the end. And eventually I settled into the here and now. In the middle of the night, in winter, in zero degrees. And it reminded me, it's like Palmer Palmer says...

“The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them."