Setting intentions is a way of practicing mindfulness by focusing on the kind of day, week, year or life you’d like to have, and visualizing the actions you can take to achieve your hopes. It’s a practice that can work for adults, teens and children alike.

If you have time as a family to gather in the morning, take turns sharing your intentions for the day. You could even light a candle or write down your intentions together on a chalkboard or paper, or construct a family ritual of your own. (If time in the morning is stretched thin, you could also take time during the evening or bedtime the night before.)

Children will likely need some help learning this new practice. A good question to begin with is, “What good do you want to invite into your life today?” You can suggest some general feelings that a child might understand and hope to experience: love, peace, joy, fun, safety and success are all good starters.

Brainstorm with children to come up with concrete ways they could experience these feelings during the day, such as “I want to invite success into my life by acing my math test,” or “I want to experience fun by playing with my friends at recess, or “I want to invite peace into my world by talking to kids at school that look lonely.” Yoga Chicago offers some other great suggestions for setting intentions with children that apply well for all ages.

Magalie L’Abbé/ Flickr

Lastly, visualize these things happening: sitting down to take the math test and knowing all the answers, being a good friend to classmates so that you can enjoy fun together at recess, being mindful of which classmates could use a friendly ear, and striking up conversation. (Visualizing your hopes for the day is also a great meditative exercise for adults, too!)

For additional ideas for setting intentions for yourself or for your family, visit Playful Planet’s website.

In the stillness and the quiet

The house is still and quiet. The only sounds are the low gurgle of the fish tank filter and my fingers tapping on the computer keys. The soft light of morning is just creeping over the pine trees out my back window and the streets are blanketed in just enough darkness that the cars outside my front window drive with their lights on.

In a few minutes, the house will be a flurry of activity. The boys will stumble down the stairs with messy hair and hungry stomachs. The dogs will need to go out. Cereal will be poured. Showers will be turned on. Coffee will be brewed, the dishwasher unloaded.

But for now, for a few more moments, the house is still and quiet.

As a child, I could never understand why my mom didn’t like the television and the radio on when we were at home. “Too much noise,” she would tell me.

Too much noise?, I pondered incredulously. How is that possible?

But now, now I get it.

There is just too much noise.

Noise on the television, noise in our workplaces, noise outside our car windows. Noise in the media and magazines, noise on Facebook and Instagram. Noise coming from internal pressures to do more and be more. Noise telling us to do this or be that. Noise complaining about this issue or that problem. Too much noise filling up space in our heads and blocking out sounds in our hearts.

Too.Much.Noise.

Lately I find myself craving less noise, and more sounds. More laughter and listening to the voices that really count. More music. More meditation, prayer and reflection, more awareness and gratitude, more stillness and quiet.

Clumsy feet are thundering down the stairs now; the morning frenzy is about to begin. Maybe you are already in the midst of your own frenzy.

We can never completely block out the noise, of course, nor do I think that we should. But maybe we could all use a little less noise? And a little more sound?

So here’s my wish for the day: May we have the wisdom to recognize the difference between the noise and the sounds. May we learn to hear our own strong and true voice inside, and may we have the courage to listen to it. And may we all have a few moments of stillness and quiet.

How do you quiet the noise?

*****

Note: This post originally appeared on the author’s website.

1.

Go ahead, climb up
the Alhambra brick–

taxis can’t come here,
and the effort it takes

is only as much as
you have in mind.

2.

How often we’ve fallen for
another algorithm for bliss,
the snake oil shill of camphor

shadows. Enough. The book
is there now, a shining blossom,
big as a magnolia bloom.

Blank. To be written. Yes, we
think–at last I’m back to myself.
Climb there too. The beautiful

street vendors are selling
therefores. The dark wine
of place. Buy some. But

carefully pluck the book, its soft
leather bent just enough to say,
yes, climb the brick passages.

3.

It may be when you wake
you’ll believe you’ve had
a stroke, but the sunlight

in its morning patterns will
teach that’s OK as well–
the world goes on without

you, us, and that’s always
been OK as well. A lesson in

belonging. Everyone’s place in
the story of the Alhambra.

Oh yes, I know that spring is finally coming to the Prairie! I can see it in the daylight sun, even if it’s not yet reflected back through leaves or color here in Minnesota.

Mostly, I can see it in the trash in my yard, which has emerged yet again from another winter leaving me in wonder.

I live on a corner, so it’s not inconceivable that people come by and drop stuff my way, but every year I am dumbfounded by the sheer variety and quantity.

This year, besides my own yard signs which froze into the ground (in violation of MN law, which would have you remove them directly after elections so you don’t tick off your neighbors through a long miserable winter), I have an endless variety of random items. I’m not talking about candy wrappers or colorful bags of other people’s dog crap—yawn. Or the unbagged piles of other people’s dog’s crap either. No, I’m talking about things that really make you wonder.

A Barbie doll’s head, for instance, one year. Did some angry kid rip that off of their sibling’s beloved doll and heave it through a passing car window, leaving only a tiny hole in the snow where it fell, making it impossible for the family to find even if they came back and tried? Wouldn’t Barbie’s long blond hair have stuck up defiantly out of the snow as a flag—here I am!? Perhaps it was an angry mother at wit’s end on a horrific February day: “What, you forgot your mittens AGAIN? I’m taking down Barbie!”

Or a tennis shoe, looking like it belonged to an adolescent male. Again, I’m left with nothing but my speculations: was my house the location for a fight between kids as they walked home? Was this revenge? Did a mean bully throw the beloved shoe of some sweet innocent kid? Or did some kid hate these shoes so much that he (I’m presuming gender here) wanted to be able to get home and say he’d lost a shoe and needed new ones? There is no phone wire over my house that someone was trying to throw it onto. So I’m bewildered.

I love imagining stories that account for weird trash items. Since I don’t know a thing, the story is all I have, and wondering about them gives me something to do as I clean the yard. I’ve found items less intriguing—a wallet, with no cash or credit cards, but library card and other things with a name on them, which I turned into the police station. Used condoms—WHAT!?!? My YARD!?!?!? On a CORNER!??!

This year, from the looks of it, the trash is mostly mundane—my own plastic pots from seedlings, that must have blown around after I stacked them neatly in the corner; gum wrappers and cigarette butts from passer-by. (Last year, a healthy cannabis plant that emerged in garden told me that someone had thrown another kind of butt into my yard!)

Here’s the thing: I’m so excited for spring, for access to my yard and garden again, that even the trash is a welcome site. Today’s task is to pick it up and get rid of it, but not in a spirit of anger or resentment. More like, “Hey! It must be spring!”

Yesterday, in a heart meditation session, I saw that my long-neglected practice had resulted in my heart looking similar to my yard: Though I could see healthy green growth and even some flowers when I looked closely in there, I could also see brambles of dead thorny branches which needed to be cut away before I could access the growth without hurting myself. For once, I was kind. For once, I put on heavy gloves in my mind’s eye before reaching in to remove those thorns. For once, I could see that the thorns were just an easily removable obstacle, and that the growth, the health, the vitality was right there beckoning to me. Clearing away the brambles I visualized in my mind’s eye became a blessing, a labyrinth leading me to the clearing.

When it’s been a long hard winter, even the trash, even the brambles, in our real and metaphoric gardens can be seen as a gift. The clearing away can be done with joy and gratitude, eagerness and optimism, when we know that spring is coming.

When we’ve been away from spiritual practice, even clearing away the rubble to get us back there can become a joy. May our spiritual practices allow us to see even ‘yard pick up day’ as a blessing, greeted with gratitude after a long cold winter. With longing for new life in our eye, may all manner of things become beautiful!