Present Presence

Nature has never failed to delight my heart when I go and seek her sanctuary. Sometimes, though, when I just go to go without asking or needing, those are the times I notice...she has a seat waiting for me. May I always have eyes to see Life's welcome.

Diamonds

For those who have endured such a winter, a meager and already melting half inch of snow is not exactly breaking news. But here where the mountains have been shrouded in dust, last night gifted rare and precious diamonds. Even the droplet contained a lake. Abundance.

I can see so many metaphors of life. I can see so many ways to take this droplet and weave it into my moving through life. But this morning, this drop, this diamond waiting to fall upon the waiting earth is simply that. To appreciate and give thanks for a droplet as it is.

Setting Day

Setting days. That's what my grandmother called them. Can't say you've done much and yet the day was full. Like noticing how the shadow of a tree resting upon the side of a house bends as it lays down on the roof. Or watching a raven call out to others that the seed has been served. Is it the same raven each day? A different raven? I cannot tell them apart. Would that I were gifted to notice this raven as distinct from others. I cannot and yet he or she is. I need to practice. Maybe that's what setting days are all about. Noticing what you can and noticing what you can't. But setting equals noticing. I guess that, in the end, is what makes the day full. Yes grandma, it is sweet.

May I so Push

The morning greeting to the plants in the sun room and to turn on their gentle music for the day. As the curtains were pulled I explained had lots to do would not be able to sit and chat right now. Deadlines were awaiting. A gentle whisper to pause and look. An orchid's bud pressed against the stem. Sitting down, I did not rise until an hour later. To do what I must, push where required, but always to do so with the gentle strength of an unopened bud.

Not Absent

So many hues, shapes, textures, and designs. Mountain clouds and runways for cloud planes to takeoff. The earthbound mountains like a stadium filled to watch the spectacle unfold.

Oh if you could but have been there to see and feel the morn and hear the gentle music playing as the sky danced. And then a sweet smile of knowing....close your eyes and breathe softly. You were. You are.

Dormancy's Dance

Last year's growth says to the cold and moisture "Come and rest upon me." What some might see as dormant and without life transforms the two into one. A resting place for life. Dormancy's dance with life.

Opening Christmas # 4 - Stepping Stones Gifts

Opening Christmas Day 4 returns the reminder that paths take many forms and are often interrupted. To let the mind settle from a calendar and clock. To honor the disruptions and lack of flow. To embrace the cannots of money, time, and even heart. To pause in wonder of a frozen lake where nature has left her footprints like cobble walking stones. All is well. Christmas is not a day. The day, the path is the journey.

Audacious Reverie

I am the wounded animal sound of the howling winds. I am the silence of sheltered walls. I am the window's view shrouded in a white out. I am the presence of the sun's crystal illumination. I am the candle's thin dance of smoke. I am the wax, wick, and flame melted as one. I am the prayer of love, joy, and freedom for all. This day for all life the stillness of a feather surrounded by storms.

Presence Stilled

I, who awaken before the dawn, woke up this morning with the sun sitting on the mountain. My mind could not figure out what kind of clouds were in the sky or the feel of the morning. I had awakened with the day already in conversation. Then to ponder how others and the earth feel when they meet my presence. Do they walk into a conversation in progress and feel out of sync? Oh that my presence today would greet others with a quiet bench that they might sit, know peace, and the conversation of their heart.

Yes

Sometimes so many questions. Just have to lay them down like a child, tuck them in and give them a gentle kiss. Then one day, struggling along a mountain lake path, the answer comes, and you whisper "Good morning."

"Only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.”  ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Surrender to the Tension

What is it about a blank page that can intimidate us? What is it about sitting in meditation, silence, or shutting the world out that makes us edgy, antsy and our minds jump into warp speed trying to fill the void? Oh, yes, a day of "nothing" is often ever so welcomed. String those days together and we suddenly find ourselves asking "what shall I do?" as if we had to have a target or goal, a purpose.

This morning I sat and looked at the blank page. I could feel the tension to write, to say something, to "release."  Instead, I surrendered and looked at the page and let my heart write as the pen remained capped. I could see the script, the words and some that had no alphabet squiggle simply feelings. The page was filled.

Sitting there in the stillness I noticed my heart went silent. Puzzled at first, my brain started to engage. The brain quieted and the heart began to sing.... as the page began to write back to me.

May I see this day before me like the blank page. To surrender to the tension of Love and Life...knowing when to write with my hands, when to write with my heart, and always to read the handwriting of Life writing back to me.

Vacant Fullness

Perhaps to enter a house empty of life, presence, filled with dust and memories, vacated of all who created the memories is the same as entering one's heart in meditation.  Your thoughts ramble, dart and zoom, some quiet, others making your heart race and then you find your breath, your stillness, your centering peace.  To look around at what was created and to know in your centering thoughts the key is that all was created.  What is not, however, created, but existed even before creation is Love, compassion, the desire and yearning to be known, dwell and abide in communion.  To see the unseen. To touch the invisible. And in doing so, to be wrapped in the very tapestry that created all.  To meditate and return to the heart absent of all "things" created knowing only the source....Love.  I wanted to go somewhere with this thought but yet another bookmark, a thread for the Loom.  Til then.... Keeper of my Heart and Breath.... for the Love you gifted and taught, thank you, still.

Stillness Standing

I will not stand my ground. I will stand quietly in Love so that even the deer have no fear and eat in the midst of Love's stillness.

A common phrase I say and hear, "In the end....." There is no end, only Now. The beginning, the end, the middle and beyond what even my little brain can comprehend, all rest in Love's tapestry of Now.

In the pre-dawn silence, standing beneath the stars, two deer came into the yard, so very close and had a breakfast of bird seed. Our stillness whispered, "A tear is but the heart's caress upon the face so that the smile of Love may drink."

Circle of Breath

A morning walk, the first with a hoody sweatshirt and sweatpants for warmth. Left before the sun fully stretched and watched her as she pulled back the night's quilt from the mountain. And with the Sun's rising, I saw my breath.  With each exhale outward I walked forward into its glistening dance.  Something inside whispered, "Remember this."  In my meditations I focus upon the breath, the Circle of Life.  This morning Life gifted the Gift of walking inside the circle and then dancing beyond. Love's Clarity

May you  know the stillness of your breath, see the Circle of Life and then walk into its Dance.

To Leave Your Thread

Amidst the wonder of fall a clearing called and beckoned me to come and sit.  The ponderings and threads I left here, so simple, unwise and insignificant, need not litter the clearing or its call.  Rather, it is the call to come and sit that is the thread I leave for you. May it be a welcomed bookmark for your day.  

Gilligan's Three Hour Tour

A riddle - how many times does a hiker have to pass a bench - gracefully placed on a mountain path- before they realize they are lost and going in circles?


Answer - at least four and I smile.

A new path and mountain to hike. An hour to enjoy the quiet solitude of new.  Three hours later - and four passes of the bench - I realized I was lost, had lost the path and no one knew where I was. Not even myself-specifically, that is. I stood pondering which way to go, began singing softly the theme song to Gilligan's Island - emphasizing the chorus .... "A three hour tour."  


Turning I saw the tree growing out of the mountain ledge, my sigh of wonder and awe replacing the song. Turning once again I saw the road. No path to the road, but the road was there. I thanked the tree and plowed my way down the mountain to the road. Sometimes I get so caught in the journey I do not notice I am lost and going in circles.  It is when I still myself that I can see the strength. In seeing the strength I can find the road and return.

Maybe Nike is right

Perhaps the losses have taken their toll, or the solitude too long. But do you not, just maybe, perhaps, even for a moment agree that at some point you have to stop reading, stop visualizing and maybe even stop believing.... and just get up and do it? 


I watch the Qi Gong instructor, on the DVD, standing by a river in a forest, the yoga instructor on the ocean beach, I read of the need to reconnect to nature and feel her heart beat synchronized with our own. Simple things. Gratitude. Quietness. Letting the monkey mind take a nap. Breathing and awareness. Don't you think at some point, you have to stop watching and become the picture itself?


Perhaps I am more odd than I thought, but the answer I got was 'yes.' And so to the lake I went, away from all others.  Beneath the sun, getting ready to kiss the moon good night, upon her heated mattress of rocks, I laid down and stretched my body. One has to relax to feel the rock's softness.  When my senses were filled, my body soaked in the sun, I stood and pretended to be the Qi Gong instructor, and pushed my hands to heaven.