A little peculiar

A posting.  (Pocomoke River State Park.)

The desire of monks and mystics is not unlike that of artists: to perceive the extraordinary within the ordinary by changing not the world but the eyes that look… To form the intention of new awareness is already to transform and be transformed.

~ Jane Hirshfield, Ten Windows:  How Great Poems Transform the World

Have an uncomfortable mind; be strange. Be disturbed: by what is happening on the planet, and to it; by the cruelty, and stupidity humanity is capable of; by the unbearable beauty of certain music, and the mysteries and failures of love, and the brief, confusing, exhilarating hour of your own life.

– Kim Addoniziok, Bukowski in a Sundress

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A Monday Meander: The redbuds and the greening

The new bridge to nowhere. I think the deer might use it because there is what looks like a deer path through the marsh on the other side. We use it to watch the tide, the fish, and the crabs come in and out of the pond.  (The old bridge M put up, using the old decking from the house, finally fell apart over the winter.  It was intended to be temporary and we were surprised it lasted as long as it did.)

It is a serious thing
Just to be alive
On this fresh morning
In this broken world.

~ Mary Oliver, excerpted from “Invitation”

What’s new?

Beautiful lilies from a beautiful friend.

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

~ Frederick Buechner, Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation

It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

A Monday Meander: Place

 

At sunrise.

To know a physical place you must become intimate with it. You must open yourself to its textures, its colours in varying day and night lights, its sonic dimensions. You must in some way become vulnerable to it. In the end, there’s little difference between growing into the love of a place and growing into the love of a person.

~ Barry Lopez

Sitting by the pond on a lovely day

As above.

I give thanks for arriving
Safely in a new dawn,
For the gifts of eyes
To see the world,
The gift of mind
To feel at home
In my life.
The waves of possibility
Breaking on the shore of dawn,
The harvest of the past
That awaits my hunger,
And all the furtherings
This new day will bring.

~John O’Donohue

Tipping the scales

Yawn.  (One of the young, and not yet weaned at the time, on Assateague Island.)

The sense of respiration is an example of our natural sense relationship with the atmospheric matrix. Remember, respiration means to re-spire, to re-spirit ourselves by breathing. It, too, is a consensus of many senses. We may always bring the natural relationships of our senses and the matrix into consciousness by becoming aware of our tensions and relaxations while breathing. The respiration process is guided by our natural attraction to connect with fresh air and by our attraction to nurture nature by feeding it carbon dioxide and water, the foods for Earth that we grow within us during respiration. When we hold our breath, our story to do so makes our senses feel the suffocation discomfort of being separated from Earth’s atmosphere. It draws our attention to follow our attraction to air, so we inspire and gain comfort. Then the attraction to feed Earth comes into play so we exhale food for it to eat and we again gain comfort. This process feels good, it is inspiring. Together, we and Earth conspire (breathe together) so that neither of us will expire. The vital nature of this process is brought to consciousness when we recognize that the word for air, spire, also means spirit and that psyche is another name for air/spirit/soul.

~ Michael J. Cohen, Reconnecting with Nature:  Finding Wellness Through Rebuilding Your Bond with the Earth

A meander: This and that and maybe another thing

Two snow geese.

Peace is not won by those who fiercely guard their differences, but by those who with open minds and hearts seek out connections.

~ Katherine Paterson

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

~ Herman Melville

We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.

~ William James