The course schedule for this year has finished. The autumn leaves that still grace us with their beautiful tones of red keep delivering some warmth in the cold winter that we already experience. As this new cycle sets in, different dynamics set the pace in the temple.Some students remain living and enjoying the temple life as the simplistic devotional life it offers. Shifu set out new plans for our schedule to match the new season. As the days are shorter, we have a busy schedule while the sun is out. We wake up, do our offerings and practice morning Scriptures. Everyday is a new opportunity to grow our unification. The times we feel our connection to each other are ever more present and they are a cause of great joy. Everyone that participates in this practice is very grateful for the opportunity and the blessing that is to have this group of siblings to practice with.After Scriptures, we can practice a little bit of qigong before the breakfast is out. After that, we start working on our chores. Because there are only six of us now up at the top temple, the chores take a little longer to be done, but we’re happy to concentrate onto the devotional character of applying ourselves into the moment of caring for our home and our field with love. The chores are divided between us and they change every three days, but some of us are giving enough to help out in the more labor-intensive jobs, even if they are not assigned to them.When we finish our chores we have a little break and then, if the weather allows us, we move on to gathering and chopping wood. We certainly need a lot of it to cook and to keep us warm in the evening when we gather around the fire.We also must watch and care for visitors. Whatever jobs we are doing, our most important function right now is to be there for worshippers so that they feel welcomed and properly guided, knowing how to make their offerings and how to go around the temple. Having the afternoon offerings being completed, some time around 12:30 we have lunch. After that, we have another break. We are to practice at least an hour a day of physical exercises. Some of us use this time to do it, some of us use the break we have in the morning. Whichever time we choose, it’s a good time for us to put effort and grow the specific gongs we are most interested in developing at this point.Around two we have another hour to two of working on gathering and chopping wood. It is at wintertime that we collect all the wood that is going to be used throughout the year. Sometime in the afternoon, we usually gather around the wood shack to practice Sometime in the afternoon, we usually gather around the wood shack to practice some parts of the Scriptures that we are having the most difficult with. With Shifu’s pointers, we see where we most acutely need to improve and it is very good to have such dedicated siblings that really invest their time and skills into making it so that we have the opportunity to have more tools to make us improve faster.After the evening offerings, we practice the Evening Scriptures. At the moment, because we hadn’t got the chance to practice them when classes were going on, we are still struggling, but we can see that progress can be quite fast.Dinner is served at around 17:45. It is quite nice to finish the schedule this early, because then we can gather around the fire to study some Chinese or just go into our beds and hibernate a bit in accordance with the times.All in all, schedule is busy and fulfilling in this simplistic way of life.
