Sunday Sermon

It's Sunday, and Alan is still going to work. Lani explains that he is obliged by virtue of his co-workers, who work seven days per week willingly. He does not wish to be seen as a shirker. The co-workers are largely Asian nationals who are supporting entire families back home with their jobs in Silicon Valley. They are heroes. Alan appreciates this, but he dreams of moving back to the mountains and skiing. When this start-up company goes public, he says, he will. I hope his serene home and magnificently loving wife help him to survive the stress until then.

I should talk. I often work seven days per week myself. But it's my art. Every fiber of my being is aimed in the same direction. I do not want to be anywhere else but on this tour. This endows me with robust health in spite of a grueling schedule.

This was not always so. When I owned the destination wedding business I started and ran for eleven years in Maui, I was ambivalent, and my physical well-being suffered. I loved making floral arrangements and decorations, fantasizing with my clients, singing them love songs, writing about and photographing my work for my catalog and web site, socializing with the guests and the wedding staff. I was not happy working in the office. Most of the time I avoided desks, preferring to sit on the floor, in the floral work room with my rabbits, or outside in the garden. Managing an office team is not my forte, as anyone who has worked with me will tell you. Where I shined was designing and preparing the site for the ceremony, with or without others. We had fun, and the set-ups were breathtaking; four of them are documented in Modern Bride editor Nancy Evan's coffee table book Bridal Style, and one appeared on Good Morning America on March 3, 1994, along with an interview.

Just as we are between centuries, I am also between lives. I don't have a physical address. I don't own anything I can't carry except the automobile inwhich I am crossing the country. I have no debts and no dependents. I am On The Road. This means I have Choice. The main question I address to each possible choice is "how do I feel?" I don't want to corner myself into a life of ambivalence again. I want to live with enthusiasm--a word meaning "filled with Spirit".