It is the ongoing, daily living of a spiritual life that has meaning. Our progress may range from dull to spectacular, but we must accept both. Each and every day should be linked together, strung into a long line of prayer beads.

In life, you don’t know how many beads you’ve counted already, and you don’t know how many are yet to come. All that matters is fingering the one that comes to you now and taking the spiritual significance of that moment to heart.

~365 Tao Daily Meditations, p. 226, Deng Ming-Dao.

A daily ritual when I was a child, weather permitting, was me and grandma taking a walk. We lived in the country with over twenty acres of land, cut with numerous footpaths and trails in various states of upkeep, backed up to the house.

Grandma was a weathered sage. She knew the hills and valleys and old…