joy – Page 7 – In the Woods

not so bleak after all

A winter without snow can get pretty bleak at times, but I’m trying to be careful about what I’m wishing for. Janet and I decided to be adventurous and spend our birthday lunch trying out a new (at least to us) organic restaurant across the river in New London, Mangetout.

The vegan and gluten-free options were clearly indicated on the menu and the specials board, which was very helpful. We warmed up with coffee, so I splurged on a soy latte – haven’t had one since November when Tim’s brother was making them for us every morning we were there in Virginia. Joy!!! It was every bit as good as Dan’s! Janet had a quiche and I had the tomato-lentil soup and a side of roasted butternut squash. All I can say is that the soup was so delicious that I now thoroughly understand how Esau could sell his birthright for a bowl of Jacob’s lentil stew.

After lunch we took a walk in the city and stopped by the Hygienic Art gallery where we saw an interesting exhibit of paintings, photographs, pottery, etc, created by local high school students. After we left, as we were strolling along, chatting away, Janet suddenly spotted a skunk making its way across a courtyard! Yikes! I scrambled and fumbled with the new camera, as I was not expecting to encounter anything but a still-life that afternoon. But I just decided to take whatever picture I could get…

Perhaps it was looking for a rest room? (It’s kind of blending in with the low white wall near the bottom left. The restroom doors say *Goddesses* and *Gods* – there are outdoor cultural programs presented here in the summer, hence the restrooms.)

I like what Avia Venefica says about the meaning of skunk encounters on her website:

We would all do well to take this animal symbolism from the skunk: Do no harm. Indeed, as a totem animal, the skunk asks us to defend ourselves effectively, without causing further conflict. … Interestingly, the skunk would prefer to be even less assertive. You see, it takes over a week to reproduce its stinky juices after using them (their glands are only good for about 4 sprays). Ergo, the skunk is 100% sure it must spray before doing so as this defense tool is a commodity in the wild – not to be wasted on false alarms. … In recognizing this, we see the skunk is the ultimate pacifist, and by adopting its peace-loving ways we may obtain the carefree lifestyle this creature enjoys.

After this bit of excitement was over, we kept exploring the shops along Bank St. and State St. and enjoying the gentle snow flurries that began fluttering through the air, adding more magic to the afternoon. We came across a colorful information booth that was boarded up with paintings on the boards covering the windows.

And before we hopped back into the car because we were chilled to the bone, we saw this tall house or apartment building with a nautical painting on one side.

It’s fun having a birthday twin, a wonderful friend, to spend it with!

treasure house of infinity

“The Rainbow” by Nikolay Nikanorovich Dubovskoy

Infinite riches are all around you if you will open your mental eyes and behold the treasure house of infinity within you. There is a gold mine within you from which you can extract everything you need to live life gloriously, joyously, and abundantly.
~ Joseph Murphy
(The Power of Your Subconscious Mind)

mother and child

mourning dove family by Watching Seasons

The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Many thanks to Tracy at Seasons Flow, for permission to use the above photograph, found on the Late Nesters post of October 1, 2001. When I first saw this touching picture of a mother mourning dove and her squab it warmed my heart and filled me with joy. Today I have a perfect opportunity to use it – in memory of my mother, who would have been eighty years old today. I miss her still.

The vegan adventure continues, although it’s been challenging not being able to chop vegetables or lift heavy pots and pans while my hand is on the mend. And it turns out that I also cracked a rib when I fell two weeks ago… (Finally decided to check things out with a doctor.) Six more weeks expected for everything to heal…

We had an encouraging surprise from Tim’s brother, the one who just had a heart attack in September. After doing some of his own research he’s also decided to become a vegetarian, so we may get a meat-free Thanksgiving after all!

And this weekend we found a local Asian cuisine restaurant. Tim had the Vegetable Delight with steamed tofu, and he ate it, all of it. I wasn’t sure I could believe my eyes!

curiosity and wonder

While we are born with curiosity and wonder and our early years full of the adventure they bring, I know such inherent joys are often lost. I also know that, being deep within us, their latent glow can be fanned to flame again by awareness and an open mind.
~ Sigurd Olson
(Listening Point)

sermons

"Home, Sweet Home" by Lizbeth Bullock Humphrey — “Home, Sweet Home” by Lizbeth Bullock Humphrey

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.

~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #236)

Save your sermons for someone that’s afraid to love
If you knew what I feel then you couldn’t be so sure
I’ll be right here lying in the hands of God
If you feel angels in your head
Teardrop of joy runs down your face
You will rise
~ Dave Matthews
♫ (Lying in the Hands of God) ♫

light in the spring

Maggie ~ 4.15.11 ~ Colchester, Connecticut

It has turned into a three-day weekend for me! Friday Janet and I got together to create pysanky – Ukrainian Easter eggs. While visiting her I was introduced to Maggie, a very sweet twelve-year-old shelter dog with arthritis who is a pit bull or mostly pit bull. She barked for a while after I arrived – Janet explained she had anxiety issues. So Maggie and I had something in common and soon relaxed around each other. Maggie kept Janet and me company as we worked on our eggs, and then the three of us took a nice long walk along the rural roads surrounding Janet’s home. It was a bright, warm-in-the-sunshine, cool-in-the-shade, day. On my way out Janet gave me some venison and a recipe for it to try out on Tim. Thanks to the GPS, I successfully navigated my way home!

Tim was working off and on this weekend, but we did get out a little on Saturday, stopping by the grocery store to get some more ingredients for the venison stew. It was very windy and we were amazed to see the flag over the grocery store flying straight out. Storm clouds were gathering, but I managed to get a picture of the chionodoxa popping up through the periwinkle and dead leaves in my garden. Tim returned to working, from home, and I watched a couple of other versions of Jane Eyre from Netflix. The rain came down hard overnight, but this day dawned bright and sunny again, a bit warmer than it was Friday.

Is it so small a thing
To have enjoyed the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done?
~ Matthew Arnold
(Seasons)

Today was a slow cooker day. The recipe Janet gave me for the venison stew was given to her by Erik, Janet and Tim’s stepdad, who died in 2008. He was a fantastic cook! When I first read through the recipe, I noted with a smile that it was from an out-of-print cookbook Erik had, called Glorious Stew by Dorothy Ivens. This brought back a pleasant memory. Many years ago Tim had enjoyed a stew Erik had prepared so much that he wanted the recipe. When Erik showed him the cookbook Tim decided he had to have one, too, but it was already out of print. So Tim asked the Book Barn to set aside a used copy for him, if one ever came into the store. A used copy did show up after what seemed like a very long time, so Tim was thrilled to finally have his own copy! 🙂

So… I modified the recipe a bit for the slow cooker and it smelled so good cooking away all day. Being a morning person, I love slow cookers because I can prepare something yummy early in the morning when I’m fresh and alert and then have something wonderful to eat in the evening, when I’m too tired, cranky and overwhelmed to cook. When Tim got a break this afternoon, we went out for a walk around Olde Mistick Village and when we arrived back home the stew smelled tangy and very tempting. It was delicious!

I took some pictures of the ducks and shops on our walk. Yes, today we have enjoyed the sun…

second blooming

I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly you find – at the age of fifty, say – that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about. … It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.
~ Agatha Christie
(Women’s Words: The Columbia Book of Quotations by Women)

a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam

My next post was supposed to be about furniture arrangements and home decorating, but I’ve stalled big time. I’m hoping this week will be more productive as many things are sliding here on the home-front. Had a very annoyingly busy week and then when the time finally came to get back to finish moving the furniture I became glued to the TV, trying to comprehend all that was and still is happening in Japan. Sometimes the mundane things in life start to feel pointless. But then I guess that’s the horror of it, so many people with their lives interrupted or cut short – it’s overwhelming to try to take in… I don’t know anyone there, but I know that each life lost was the most important person in the world to somebody, and for them my heart breaks.

“Japan’s recent massive earthquake, one of the largest ever recorded, appears to have moved the island by about eight feet (2.4 meters), the US Geological Survey said.”

“The quake probably shifted the position of Earth’s axis about 6.5 inches, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge.”

These numbers boggle my mind. In one sense we’re safely spinning through space on our relatively little blue spaceship, but when the planet starts readjusting itself it abruptly reminds us of how precious this life is, and how precarious in the grand scheme of things, whatever that scheme ultimately proves to be.

I feel something like a Who on the speck of dust in Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who! “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” We feel so very small in the face of this. Such a pale little blue dot, our earth. But such a cataclysmic upheaval of our big beautiful and often frightening planet.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
~ Carl Sagan
(Pale Blue Dot)

As I’m writing this some of the lyrics of Pig, one of Dave Matthews’ older songs, one of my favorites, come back to me with added poignancy:

Isn’t it strange
How we move our lives for another day
Like skipping a beat
What if a great wave should
Wash us all away
Just thinking out loud
Don’t mean to dwell on this dying thing
But looking at blood
It’s alive right now
Deep and sweet within
Pouring through our veins
Intoxicate moving wine to tears
Drinking it deep
Then an evening spent dancing
It’s you and me
This love will open our world
From the dark side we can see a glow of something bright
There’s much more than we see here
Don’t burn the day away
~ Dave Matthews
♫ (Pig) ♫

All we have is this moment. Let us not burn our days away…

giving thanks

We’ve missed our traditional Thanksgiving celebration for the last two years, once due to a death in the family and then because our hostess extraordinaire was recuperating from surgery. It looks as if all systems are “go” this year, and we’re off to Virginia soon in a caravan of cars for a feast and grand re-connection with Tim’s side of the family. My daughter and nieces are scheming with me for a surprise for my dearly loved sister-in-law, so there is a lot of excitement in the air. It will be so good to get a change of scenery and catch up with family happenings!

Even though things have not been easy lately, I’m very thankful for the many blessings I’m still aware of in my life. The abundant gifts our mother, Earth, offers us… Family near and far away, friends, old and new ones found recently in the blogosphere… Artists and writers past and present who have shared their inspired pictures and words, themselves really… Scientists and naturalists who help me to keep my sense of wonder and awe… Musicians who bring joy to my heart… I’m full of memories of special times with people I’ve loved and still miss, and am full of warm thoughts for those I love and have with me now. I am grateful for all these connections!

Thanksgiving, 1900 postcard, Image: Wikimedia Commons

Wishing everyone a blessed Thanksgiving!