A Monday meander: So you want to write

Near the edge.  (Blackwater Falls State Park, West Virginia.  October 2021.)

In life, there are brief and momentary opportunities that ask us to assert our existence. Although a creative impulse, they can be destructive, because they make us veer away from our normal patterns and habits. Life is compelling us to take these small acts of rebellion so we can go beyond the edges of ourselves, and by doing so, we end up rediscovering ourselves. These moments are a great reminder that, like all other animals, we are, and will always be, wild.

~ Kamand Kojouri

What good is a dream that doesn’t test the mettle of the dreamer? What good is a path that doesn’t carry us to the edge of our capacity and then beyond that place? A true calling involves a great exposure before it can become a genuine refuge.

~ Michael Meade, Fate and Destiny, The Two Agreements of the Soul

A blessing

A sunset from Chincoteague.

At The End Of The Year

— A Blessing by John O’Donohue

As this year draws to its end,
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.

The days when the veil lifted
And the soul could see delight;
When a quiver caressed the heart
In the sheer exuberance of being here.

Surprises that came awake
In forgotten corners of old fields
Where expectation seemed to have quenched.

The slow, brooding times
When all was awkward
And the wave in the mind
Pierced every sore with salt.

The darkened days that stopped
The confidence of the dawn.

Days when beloved faces shone brighter
With light from beyond themselves;
And from the granite of some secret sorrow
A stream of buried tears loosened.

We bless this year for all we learned,
For all we loved and lost
And for the quiet way it brought us
Nearer to our invisible destination.

Watching the sunrise through the hydrangea.  (From August.)

The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receeding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

~ R.S.Thomas

Sixty-three

This is the last photo I took at the age of 62.

Not wanting to know much about getting old (I don’t mean older, I mean old: late seventies, eighties, beyond) is probably a human survival characteristic.  What’s the use of knowing anything about it ahead of time?  You’ll find out enough when you get there.

~ Ursula K. LeGuin, No Time to Spare

A Monday meander: Acts of love

Gathered.

And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

~ Wendell Berry

A love project

The intensity of color at the end of the season. (In the scrounger’s/flower garden a couple of days ago.  The zinnias are still going strong, the new blooming and replacing the old.)

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds

~ e. e. cummings

Don’t forget love;

it will bring all the madness you need

to unfurl yourself across

the universe.

~ Mirabai

A Monday meander and a proclamation for Walktober

Where does the light go?

There is a long time in me between knowing and telling.

~ Grace Paley

The journey from the heart to the throat to the mouth is a long one.

~ Mirabelle D’Cunha