14.27 From York

Huge lakes of rainwater like cold tea in the fields. Silver birches at the bottom of the railway embankment, their thin trunks catching afternoon light filtered through pale cloud as we approach Micklefield -.the first stop, as the conductor announces. I have a new blue pair of trousers in my bag with a small damp patch where the torrential rain penetrated my bag. I declined the paper carrier I was offered in the shop, as it would have been reduced to pulp by the time I'd walked to the station in the downpour. Enough sun to cast shadows on the platform at Micklefield.

I visualise being at the centre of a sacred circle, as Pema Chodron suggests, and consider that everything that enters the circle is there to teach me something. How would my life be if I could sustain this perception? Who would I be if I were always at the centre of a sacred circle? Who indeed would I be if, as Tara Brach asks, I didn't believe there was something wrong with me? Already shaking free of this belief, though it clings in places, sticky. If I didn't live with the persistent dim fear that I'm doing something wrong, or ought perhaps to be doing something different, something other than what I am doing now, and now and now... what then? If I believed that there's nothing wrong, nothing that needs changing, and at the same time that change is always possible, indeed inevitable. But the kind I can have a hand in can be hard to identify. Puts me in mind of the serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.