From Chaos to Peace with Conny

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Overcoming the fear of getting out of line

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 I knew from personal experience the painful and humiliating consequences of stepping out of line, even though it ended up being only a kind of flick on the nose. One November, when my daughter was a baby, my husband, Sergei, and I decided to participate in the annual celebration of the Great October Revolution. We joined the parade that marched through the streets of Sverdlovsk, to end up in the main city square, taking Julia in her stroller with us. But we soon fell out of step. It was unbearably cold, and not only was our little daughter getting cold, but we had overestimated our own endurance. We decided to find a shorter route to the central square, where loud music was playing and a voice kept shouting out cheerful words of greeting and salutation to all the marching columns with flags and banners. When we reached the central square, we tried to join another column that was marching toward the Lenin’s monument. But our attempt to re-join ...
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Just Swing

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      Two years ago I started jogging.   To beat the stress, I added walking and jogging, thinking that exercising more would give me a benefit of losing five extra pounds  that I gained in spite of my strict daily regimen.       I downloaded  "lose it" app on my iPhone and began calculating each gram of food that was going into my mouth. My goal was to restore my sleep to be able to look and perform even better.      Thinking that 10 thousand steps and 900 calories a day will do the job, I decided to keep my yoga and pilates practice to maintain flexibility. In an instance, I got addicted to uploading my daily pedometer reading into a fitness software to get digital praises and bonuses from my health insurance company each night. In sixteen weeks,  10 thousand steps a day took me on a virtual journey around the world. I was thrilled. Instead of being fatigued, I felt energized, ecstatic,...
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Thoughts from the Hammock

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      I look back at my Raytown congregation that, following my Russian tradition, gave me a blessing for the journey that just begun. I still visit some of my members in the hospitals, answering their e-mails and phone calls.  I am patiently waiting for God to show me the final destination of my transition. I am still in limbo, but I know with all my heart that one day I will understand every moment of my present context of transition as clear as I see my new plants. It is too hot for planting, and I could see how this transition is tough on them for the first two-three days, but what a joy when they start blooming, becoming healthy and joyful again! All they need is patience and watering, the rest will happen by itself. Transition sometimes is simply being.      I feel good about what I accomplished in Raytown and with Paul I recite, “I am confident of this: that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of J...
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