The Advent Collage Calendar begins

My bicycle teaches me things all the time. From the necessity of getting back on after you fall off to the hill is your friend, even if you sometimes have to walk the bike up it.

Advent 12-1-15

Two quotes about bicycles that inspire me are:

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.  -Helen Keller

Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.  -Susan B. Anthony

Today, as I begin my fourth year of making my own Advent Calendar, I am thinking about all the ways I can find balance, freedom and self-reliance in my life, and to go further into practicing each every single day. And those days that I fall off, to just get back on again and keep at it.

I wish you the same.