Awake

1923483_52647789908_329283_n
                                                                  Atlantic Sunrise: Na’ama Yehuda

 

 

Be awake.

In the world. For the world.

Be aware.

Of the life that unfolds

On pinpoint.

Keep your eyes

Open.

And your heart

Soft.

Wake up all words

Of hope.

Even those

Packed away in tight bundles

And locked.

Be awake

To the air. To the light. To the rain.

As shimmer reflects

And compassion

Remains.

 

 

For The Daily Post

Overworked, Underplayed

overscheduled

The mom consulted her phone’s calendar.

“She has soccer on Mondays right after school, then she has a pre-reading tutor. Tuesday she has piano after school but I can rush her to you if you have time for a session at 5:30 or so? She’ll be a little tired and maybe hungry but I can give her dinner in the car on the way here or something. Oh, actually, next month she’ll start rehearsals for her recital. Thursdays are really difficult because she has gymnastics and then they have rehearsal training, so she won’t be able to do anything before 6pm. Maybe that’s a bit too late? Fridays she has another pre-reading class. I really don’t want her falling behind. Maybe I can bring her to you after … though she has some playdates scheduled next month. Saturday she does ice-skating. …” Looked up. Sighed, “Do you work Sundays?”

The little girl is not yet five.

 

overscheduled-300x225

For The Daily Post

 

 

Please Be There

SpacornerJune13no2

Photo Credit: A.A.

Please be there

For the hope

For the plans.

Please be there

For the trials and the errors

The triumphs

The sorrows

The fumbles

The sighs.

Please be there

For the small things

The bigger,

Stay dialed in

To moments long gone,

To those still to come.

Please be there

In awareness, in person,

Pay full mind

To this life.

To your life’s

Invitation.

You are one of a kind.

 

For The Daily Post

 

Infinite sweetness

elephant attachment

There’s so much harshness and rigidity, so many difficult realities, hardened views, unyielding opinions, and limited acceptance all around, that it can be easy to forget the infinite sweetness that exists all around us.

The infinite sweetness

In a baby’s smile.

In a youngling’s antics.

In the green of an unfurling leaf.

In a stranger’s compassion.

In a perfect strawberry.

In a sip of tea on snowy days.

In the sigh of warm bath water.

In the life that sheds and lives and sheds and lives in all around us.

In the repeating revolution of this planet, hurtling as it is through space in speeds we cannot comprehend and yet are an integral part of.

The infinite sweetness of what can be remembered with nostalgia and what is hoped for and may well become — or may just, possibly, find pathways.

To infinity.

SpaDec2013no1

Photo Credit A.A.

Gateways

inisheer

Photo by: anselmona

On the almost eve of a new year, may your path hold clear as you pass into the nascent potential of what is almost born to be. For it can be, in truth, all that there can be.

Not all newness smells of radical divergence. In every sense, all paths we take form in the footsteps of those we already walked. It is where we head, how we carry our present time and what we see as possible, that breathes new life into the future. Farmers toiled for centuries, building fences to clear fertile ground and to protect the livestock with the use of the very rocks that made obstacles for plows. Stones remained stones even as they have become all that and then some.

We, too, are what we always were … and then some. We are who we know to be and what we learned to do about it, how we join the paths of others, how we forge our own to clear ground for new growth (hopefully in compassionate persistence). We are how we build with what is there. How we tend to obstacles and plow potential. What we form within us and around us. How we become what we know.

May the path hold clear in sun and mist, in fog and rainbow. May it be.

§§§

Gateways:

Every gate you pass holds pathways

Of times walked through

Stone by stone.

Every passage holding steady

Leaning onto

All that’s gone.

Every walkthrough

Every newness

Wraps around the times you know.

All the pebbles

Rocks

Big Boulders

That held back

Allowed

Remembered

All that needed

Fought

To grow.

garden gate