Day 4, Sunday

 Yum! If you happen to be in or come to Chico, there is a great breakfast restaurant called, The Roost. A little, no frills place with great food at good prices. I can only speak with experience to one dish, but I heard others saying how great their food was. For dinner, I went to the Hometown Buffet, primarily for the company. Not a good choice for food or company.

One of the hardest things I've found thus far about traveling by myself is not having someone soft and pleasant to share my experiences with. Odd, for someone who has hardly ever traveled with company.  I guess getting older does create changes. I find that I am much more reserved in meeting people now than I once was. Not because of fear of rejection or anything like that, but rather, just not as interested in putting forth all the effort in overcoming the initial resistance to make that first connection. Women of "date-able" age seem to be much more shielded now than when I was in my 20's and 30's. Especially so when one is just in town for a week or so.

I went to a Center for Spiritual Living (CSL) church this morning and the speaker was an ex-staff minister who spoke about the affair she had with one of the members of the church and what she learned from the experience. She lost her husband and her children don't want to speak with her for now and the guy lost his wife. As she said, she is going to be punished by her actions for years, but she is now moving on. I have great respect for this woman who lived through her mistakes, learned from them, was open about it and then decided to move on. I was sitting in the front row and could see how her hands were shaking. It takes a true spiritual warrior to stand in front of a congregation as she did and make such a confession and apology.

We all commit behaviors we later regret. In fact, we may even regret the behavior AS we commit it but feel like we have no choice. (Do we have a choice if we can't see that we have a choice?) This is all a part of living. One aspect of living a spiritually-based life is that we choose to focus on learning from our "mistakes" and attempt to discontinue those behaviors that don't serve the greater good of all. We forgive ourselves as well as others and we don't run from what is difficult to face about ourselves and our own behavior/emotions/thoughts. It is very rare that great spiritual growth comes without difficult challenges.

I hung out with Tom and his girlfriend, Bridget for a while in the evening. Tom's roommate, Cal, came out and visited for a short while too. Wonderful conversations going on all evening. I retired about 10pm to let them have alone time.