Well, I couldn’t wait to share the pictures tucked away on my camera so I decided to post this picture from my cell phone. Katherine has spent her first night at home and the new little family is settling into their nest. I am so thrilled to be holding my sweet little granddaughter so often. I love this blessing for a new baby written by John O’Donohue:
As I enter my new family, May they be delighted At how their kindness Comes into blossom.
Unknown to me and them, May I be exactly the one To restore in their forlorn places New vitality and promise.
May the hearts of others Hear again the music In the lost echoes Of their neglected wonder.
If my destiny is sheltered, May the grace of this privilege Reach and bless the other infants Who are destined for torn places.
If my destiny is bleak, May I find in myself A secret stillness And tranquillity Beneath the turmoil.
May my eyes never lose sight Of why I have come here, That I never be claimed By the falsity of fear Or eat the bread of bitterness.
In everything I do, think, Feel, and say, May I allow the light Of the world I am leaving To shine through and carry me home.
The leaf of every tree brings a message from the unseen world Look, every falling leaf is a blessing. ~ Rumi (The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi)
It’s morning again, little hope, and the world’s drying off with fresh-laundered sunshine. Life’s face is never the same though we may look at it for all eternity. ~ Kolbein Falkeid (Morning)
To be worthy of the astonishing world, a sense of wonder will be a way of life, in every place and time, no matter how familiar: to listen in the dark of every night, to praise the mystery of every returning day, to be astonished again and again, to be grateful with an intensity that cannot be distinguished from joy. ~ Kathleen Dean Moore (Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature)
Wednesday afternoon Janet and I found a new woodland garden to explore, Kentford Farm in Stonington, Connecticut. We seemed to have the place to ourselves, but for a very charming tortoiseshell cat who acted as our hostess. When we left we spotted a sign saying the garden was open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays – unknowingly we had been trespassing! But the gate had been open so perhaps our confusion was understandable.
We introduce ourselves To Planets and to Flowers But with ourselves Have etiquettes Embarrassments And awes ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1184)
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
We will have to return as the seasons progress – it’s a perennial garden and there will be different things blooming every time we go. Please enjoy some of my favorite photographs. The plan was to travel light, with just the camera and not its bag, but it backfired on me when the camera battery died only about a third of the way through. Next time I will carry the whole kit and caboodle with me!
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
The wall is silence, the grass is sleep, Tall trees of peace their vigil keep, And the Fairy of Dreams, with moth-wings furled, Sings soft her secrets to the drowsy world. ~ Ida Rentoul Outhwaite (Tibetan Buddhism Deck: Buddhas, Deities, and Bodhisattvas 30 Meditation Cards)
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
Way over yonder is a place I have seen In a garden of wisdom from some long ago dream ~ Carole King ♫ (Way Over Yonder) ♫
Frequently the woods are pink – Frequently, are brown. Frequently the hills undress Behind my native town – Oft a head is crested I was wont to see – And as oft a cranny Where it used to be – And the Earth – they tell me On it’s axis turned! Wonderful rotation – By but twelve performed! ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #24)
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature)
5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut
The good Will of a Flower The Man who would possess Must first present Certificate Of minted Holiness. ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #954)
We live in a world of color. All nature is color: white, black, and grey do not exist except in theory; they are never seen by the eye – they could only exist in a world that was colorless. Such a universe is beyond imagination: a world without color would be a world without light, for light and color are inseparable. ~ E. Ambrose Webster (E. Ambrose Webster: Early Modernist Painter)
Even driftwood twisted into wooden ghosts, overgrown worms, gnarled and craggy, appeals. The final arbitrator of its form has been friction with the world. It becomes what it is through long travel. ~ Barbara Hurd (Walking the Wrack Line: On Tidal Shifts & What Remains)
Childhood is a mystery: the soul is timeless, the body new, and the world complex. What a conjunction: the great unfolding in the small. … Childhood asks us what reality really is, what the world is, and where it came from. Childhood asks where life came from, and where it goes. Does the soul exist? Where was the soul before birth? How many realms are there? Are fairies real? Do ghosts and spirits exist? Why are some people lucky and others unlucky, why is there suffering? Why are we here? Are there more things in the innocent-seeming world than we can see? These are some of the questions that the state of childhood asks, and which perplex us all our days. … Childhood is an enigma, a labyrinth, an existential question, a conundrum. It is the home of all the great questions about life and death, reality and dream, meaning and purpose, freedom and society, the spiritual and the secular, nature and culture, education and self-discovery. ~ Ben Okri (A Time for New Dreams)
Is it a mistake to look to the world to tell us the meaning of our plummeting lives? Maybe we all have the power to shape our own structure, the structure of our metaphoric wings, what lifts us — our character maybe, call it our spirit. We all in our own ways catch the light of the world and reflect it back, and this is what is bright and surprising about a person, this rainbow shimmer created from colorless structure. Maybe there is no meaning in the world itself – no sorrow. In fact, no good or bad, beginning or end. Maybe what there is, is the individual way each of us has of transforming the world, ways to refract it, to create of it something that shimmers from our spread wings. This is our work, creating these wings and giving them color. ~ Kathleen Dean Moore (Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature)
Time seems to fly by so quickly, and yet, each day seems so long in the living. Especially in August. Please! One crisis at a time!!!
8.27.13 ~ Durham, North Carolina
Near the end of August my sister and I finally and reluctantly decided that our aunt, who is 98, required more care than we could reasonably provide for her. The family doctor pulled some strings and found her a place in a “good” nursing home, much to our relief. She is now “settled in” there.
Our father, who is 91, is doing a little better, but is still on oxygen and remains very weak. So far my sister and brother-in-law feel they can manage him at home. He will probably never walk again, even with his walker… But I have to keep a watchful eye on my sister’s well-being – she has done more for the ancient ones than most people, including myself, would have or could have done.
8.27.13 ~ Durham, North Carolina
At the end of the month I spread my wings and accepted my daughter’s invitation to fly to North Carolina to visit her and my son-in-law in their new digs. It was the first time I flew by myself, although I had a flash of insight on the plane – I wasn’t flying by myself at all – there were many other people on board, fellow humans all with their own ways of transforming the world. All of us one. The flights there and back were spiritual highs for me!
Larisa at Sarah P. Duke Gardens 8.27.13 ~ Durham, North Carolina
Visiting Dima & Larisa for five days was wonderful! Very humid weather put something of a damper on outdoor adventures, but we had fun gardening in the early morning hours and decorating the living room and kitchen together one fun afternoon. We explored Durham in the air-conditioned car and talked and talked and talked. And had some great meals out and even better meals from their kitchen and grill. Had loads of fun taking pictures! I also came home with a lot of spider and mosquito bites for souvenirs. 🙂
tropical quail (?) Magic Wings Butterfly House at the Museum of Life & Science 8.31.13 ~ Durham, North Carolina
The trip did me a world of good – thank you so much for your gracious hospitality and welcoming arms, my wonderful kids!
