Awakening

The eastern Ontario highlands are awakening, wildflowers, ferns and tiny saplings coming up through the bleached and tattered fallen leaves of last autumn. Every sunny alcove in the woods seems to be tenanted by hopeful sprigs of green.

The situation makes one feel like dancing, if it can be done without tumbling ass over teakettle into a prickly thicket along the trail. An exuberant lurching about is probably the best we can do, but we (Beau and I) just have to express our gratitude to the Old Wild Mother for giving us such a sublime morning in May.

Three cheers for Mama. She certainly knows how to put on a show.

Awakening, Little By Little

Thursday Poem - This

This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.

No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.

No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.

No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.

That, and the beloved's clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.

Gregory Orr
(from How Beautiful the Beloved)

Thursday Poem - This

This is what was bequeathed us:

This earth the beloved left

And, leaving,

Left to us.

No other world

But this one:

Willows and the river

And the factory

With its black smokestacks.

No other shore, only this bank

On which the living gather.

No meaning but what we find here.

No purpose but what we make.

That, and the beloved's clear instructions:

Turn me into song; sing me awake.

Gregory Orr

(from How Beautiful the Beloved)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Ultimately, to live an enchanted life is to pick up the pieces of our bruised and battered psyches, and to offer them the nourishment they long for. It is to be challenged, to be awakened, to be gripped and shaken to the core by the extraordinary which lies at the heart of the ordinary. Above all, to live an enchanted life is to fall in love with the world all over again. This is an active choice, a leap of faith which is necessary not just for our own sakes, but for the sake of the wide, wild Earth in whose being and becoming we are so profoundly and beautifully entangled.

Sharon Blackie, The Enchanted Life, Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday

Wordless Wednesday, Awakening