Ushering in Autumn

While some were sleeping this morning.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate summer: I do. I love it deeply, from the first rich flush of hawthorn blossoms to the last fading mauves of August heather. I love the green and the growing, the treasures of the hedgerows, and the always astonishing abundance of the land which surrounds me. It’s just that I love autumn and winter more. Something opens up in me then – something soft and deep and glowing – which is far too shy to expose itself to the inexhaustible light of summer.

~ Sharon Blackie, The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday

A Monday meander: Snow day

It snowed this morning!  (Hopefully you can see the white stuff that might look like lint on your screen.  It’s snow!)

I bless this day in the fullness of good it already contains, in the many occasions it offers to listen deeply, to be of service to others, to express gratitude moment by moment and to keep my mind so filled with love, beauty and joy that no negativity can find even the tiniest crack in which to set foot.

I bless this day in the infinite opportunities it gives me to love:  to love and bless every human I meet, every beast or bird I pass by, every plant I behold, for all are but the manifold expressions of the infinite Life that undergirds all.

Truly, I bless this day for the wonderful adventure it can become as I walk through it with the eyes of wonder rather than boredom, use every opportunity to express peace rather than irritation, and choose love over fear.

Thank you, Life, for this day.

~ Pierre Pradervand, 365 Blessings to Heal Myself and the World

A Monday meander

Hanging on in the oak tree.

The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am. My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to imitate one another’s imagined greatness.
If I do not know who I am, it is because I think I am the sort of person everyone around me wants to be. Perhaps I have never asked myself whether I really wanted to become what everybody else seems to want to become. Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire, I would really begin to live after all. I would be liberated from the painful duty of saying what I really do not think.

~ Thomas Merton

Past and present

A bubble from the past. (February 2012)

The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

~Wendell Berry

A Monday meander

Morning reflections

When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.

~ Fred Rogers

If we were having coffee: First coffee chat of 2016 edition

Female Belted Kingfisher sunbathing. (This is not a great picture — it was taken through a dirty window. and I don’t know what’s going on around her eye (something is make it look larger than usual) — but it’s very difficult to catch a kingfisher and I’m always happy when I can.

In Greek mythology there is a legend of a woman by the name of Halcyone and her husband Ceyx.  Shortly after their wedding, Ceyx had to make a voyage.  A storm arose during the voyage, and Ceyx was drowned.  Every day that he was gone, Halcyone walked the shores of the beaches, longing for her husband.  After several months, the body of her husband washed ashore.

Halcyone was so filled with grief that she threw herself into the ocean.  The gods were moved by her love and grief, and she and her husband were turned into kingfishers.  They rose out of the ocean and flew off happily into the blue skies.  It was declared that the seas would be calm and the sun would shine for seven days before and seven days after the shortest day of the year.  This time came to be known as the halcyon days.  Today, all sunlit days upon the water are considered halcyon days.

~ Ted Andrews, Animal Speak

If we were having coffee: Busyness edition

Water inverted.

Of all the things that human beings make and do for each other, it is the unquantifiable ones that contribute most to human happiness.

~ Charles Eisenstein