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

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

A day away

Dancing with the sunrise. (Yesterday. Do you see the dancer in the sky?  Or maybe you see an angel?)

When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.

~ bell hooks

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