Love always begins with us and moves outwards in healthy and positive ways.
Monthly Archives: May 2014
Elegance
Kathy and I drove to British Columbia today. It is about an eight-hour drive so lots of time for quiet and conversation. Driving through mountains there is a lot to behold in the pure silence married to nature’s stillness.
At one point, Kathy commented how at this time of year the mountains in the distant seem closer with snow coming down further. During the summer, the mountains are snow-free and do not stand out the same way. Today, it looked like there had been snow in the past couple of days contrasting the darkness.
Linda Gregg’s poem captures how human silence provides humans with opportunities to witness nature’s pure stillness. In moments of pure silence, we feel ourselves embedded in something larger containing us and everything else. There is a sense of smallness and, yet, a sense of largeness in this exquisite elegance. In these moments, we feel a deep sense of caring from the world and towards the world.
All that is uncared for.
Left alone in the stillness
in that pure silence married
to the stillness of nature.
A door off its hinges,
shade and shadows in an empty room.
Leaks for light. Raw where
the tin roof rusted through.
The rustle of weeds in their
different kinds of air in the mornings,
year after year.
A pecan tree, and the house
made out of mud bricks. Accurate
and unexpected beauty, rattling
and singing. If not to the sun,
then to nothing and to no one.
Haiku 5/1/14
Things are not quite as progressed in Edmonton as they were in Spokane. Spring is still finding its way. We had a couple of very nice days, but now the forecast is for snow/rain mix this weekend. When I walked to campus and back, the daffodils had a firm hold. Here, it is still a couple of weeks away.
Daffodils and tulips
Mingling colors, fragrance-
Caterpillars climb
Afternoon on a Hill
Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote this beautiful poem which reminded me about how the greatest things are sometimes about those things which touch us, but we do not necessarily touch them. The world greets us in the form of the sun, flowers, its geology, sky, etc. We sense these things in the fullest way. They reach into us and touch us deeply in a spiritual way.
When we are present in the world, it makes the world come alive, we only need to sit, and it makes us feel fully we are part of it and not outside it.
I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.
And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!
greetings
This is a beautiful poem and accompanying picture. We often go through life as a certainty. The reality is it is more like walking a path with a gentle breeze pressing at our backs.
hello to you, lost friends
waiting by the path
hello to you, gentle breeze
pressing at my back
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 