Contrasts

One dewy morning.

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider
the orderliness of the world. Notice
something you have never noticed before,

like the tambourine sound of the snow-cricket
whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb.

Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,
shaking the water-sparks from its wings.

Let grief be your sister, she will whether or not.
Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,
like the diligent leaves.

A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world
and the responsibilities of your life.

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.

In the glare of your mind, be modest
And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.

Live with the beetle, and the wind.

~ Mary Oliver

A Monday meander: Beauty

Black-eyed Susan in the front meadow.

When we awaken to the call of Beauty, we become aware of new ways of being in the world.  We were created to be creators.  At its deepest heart, creativity is meant to serve and evoke beauty.  When this desire and capacity come alive, new wells spring up in parched ground; difficulty becomes invitation, and rather than striving against the grain of our nature, we fall into rhythm with its deepest urgency and passion.

~ John O’Donohue, Beauty

A Monday meander: The light and shadows of early July

Morning spin.

To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.

~ Terry Tempest Williams

Paths I’ve walked

A winding path.  (Vermont)

Desire paths speak of possibility. All animal paths are desire paths; so were the first roads, shaped by nothing more than a common urge to join one place to another. The poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts write that desire paths “begin over time, imperceptibly, gathering definition as people slowly recognise and legitimise the footfall of their peers.” It’s been suggested that fifteen journeys are all that’s required to begin a fresh way, to introduce new shapes to the built environments we live in. Where the designed way is often straight and rectilinear, the desire path bends and flows. It offers grace rather than instruction.

Paved roads show us where we ought to go, but desire paths are made when we step off the road and let our hearts decide the way. They seek out the most direct connection between where we are and where we wish to be. Worn by the pressure of passing feet, they’re declarations of a kind: there is another way.

~ David Farrier, from the article Desire Paths on Emergence Magazine

What’s in a name

A tangle of trees and ice.  (February weather.)

It is when we are confronted with poignant reminders of mortality that we become most aware of the strangeness and wonder of our brief life on Earth.

~ Kathleen Basford

If this time is our only time, and it is, then surely we do owe it to ourselves, and to each other, to pay attention, to look deeply, to listen closely, and to respond to all of it, somehow, with love and gratitude.

~ Katrina Kenison

A Saturday saunter

Ice on the beach at the Point.

The least movement is of importance to all nature.  The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

~ Blaise Pascal

Choices

The last sunset of 2020.

Starting from where you are now, you choose. And in choosing, you also choose who you will be. If this sounds difficult and unnerving, it’s because it is. Sartre does not deny that the need to keep making decisions brings constant anxiety. He heightens this anxiety by pointing out that what you do really matters. You should make your choices as though you were choosing on behalf of the whole of humanity, taking the entire burden of responsibility for how the human race behaves. If you avoid this responsibility by fooling yourself that you are the victim of circumstances or of someone else’s bad advice, you’re failing to meet the demands of human life and choosing a fake existence, cut off from your own authenticity.

~ Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café