The other evening I enjoyed my first “hammock sit” of the year.
I hadn’t started to use a hammock until June last year, once the trees were already in bloom, once the mosquitos were already “out for blood.” So, when I looked up at the trees this time, I was a bit thrown off. And then I noticed them: the minuscule buds on the branches. (Still not visible here)
Nature, it seems, naturally obeys Benedict’s call in the Prologue: Run while you have the light of life. The trees are off and running for another year. I sat, pondering the trees, on my hammock in good company: with Mary Oliver. After a busy couple of weeks, with a few more ahead, this was just the solitude I needed to re-center myself.
Mary offered her wisdom:
The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you, my darlings.
All I can tell you is what I know.
Look, and look again.
The world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.
It’s more than bones.
It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It’s more than the beating of a single heart.
It’s praising.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
still another.
(From To Begin With, the Sweet Grass)
May those days be full of “hammock moments.”
Let us walk in the holy presence.
Friday, May 4, 2018
Pax in Terra: A Meditation from Pema Chödrön
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What did you notice? The dew-snail; the low-flying sparrow; the bat, on the wind, in the dark; big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest perfo...
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After my last post , one of my sisters stopped me by the community room and told me about a podcast from Anderson Cooper. In the eight-episo...
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" One of the astronauts who went to the moon later described his experience looking back at Earth from that perspective. Earth looked s...