Situation updates will be posted on the Public Safety “Safety Notifications” webpage. All contact methods may be updated or changed within MyU with the exception of the umn.edu email address, which is required. Rapid notifications in emergency situations will be sent to faculty, staff, and students via the following channels: text, phone, and email, depending on individual preferences. In all events, we strive to communicate quickly and accurately with the University community, the media, and the public to keep our campus safe. Send 600- to 700-word articles on all aspects of inner peace to Richard Carey ( ).The University of Minnesota Twin Cities has a detailed communications plan for any on-campus emergency-fire, bomb threat, severe weather, major crime, riot, or accident. Richard Carey lives in Ashland and, when not facilitating the Inner Peace column, spends most of his time studying the Zen of idleness and scribbling out the occasional poem. I have other places too, some imaginary, but Grandma’s kitchen will always be at the center of my mandala.Īs these articles go forward, I’d love to hear about your special place, no matter where it is or how you get there. It is a place in my memory that was real enough, but now seems beyond reality, though still accessible. So, what is inner peace for me? It is a place where I am safe, where I am loved, where I am doing the things I love to do. She’s been gone many years now, and the only thing I can do to repay her is try in my own small way to pass on her gift. Whatever capacity I have for giving and receiving love, was a gift from her. Everything I know about love, I learned from her. I felt safe because I was loved unconditionally, not only because I was her grandchild but because I somehow knew we were kindred spirits. Without any necessary articulation of my world-sense in my flowering young spirit, I felt safe. Of greater importance was the wealth of love in that little kitchen. Did my grandmother plant the seed or simply nurture it? It doesn’t matter. My love of language, words, and puzzles will stay with me all my life. Such were the summer mornings of my childhood. The Times puzzle is still too hard for me, mostly, but she has given me a little book of my own crosswords that I work on at her side. I sit beside her at the little table, immersed in her grandmotherly warmth. I am irresistibly drawn to this activity. After all the breakfast things are washed and put away, she devotes about an hour each morning to the puzzle. My grandmother is not a fan of the Times, but she does treasure the Sunday crossword. My grandfather is a long-time reader of the Sunday New York Times, which he picks up after mass every Sunday morning. Sunlight spills in from the window and through the screen door leading to the back porch. However, these days, when I visit this place, it’s early in the morning, after my grandfather has gone off to his job at the steel mill, leaving just the two of us. In the evening, it’s usually Scrabble or cards. In the center is a small vinyl-topped table with a checkered tablecloth, white and yellow. I don’t remember much else about the decorative scheme - a lot of yellow, which in those times seemed to be a popular kitchen color. A small phone table sits under a back-corner window. It’s a spacious kitchen, a useful kitchen, its perimeter lined with all her appliances and gadgetry of the time, including the ogreous meat grinder perched next to the sink, the big hour-glass-shaped coffee pot with its mysterious components. We play in her kitchen, which comforts my retreating spirit in all of its parts. We don’t keep score the winner is the one who first uses all their tiles. She has modified the rules to make the game friendlier. All my attention is on a small wooden rack holding seven tiles, each with a letter and a numerical value. However, it is not my 7-year-old navel that I contemplate. In the place where I go, as in any proper meditation, my thoughts become calm and focused.
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