Monday Musings

On Thursday we had our first personal training session at the gym in 5 weeks.  I felt GREAT afterward. So, I did stuff this weekend:  My husband and I worked in the yard.  I sorted through paperwork.  I cleaned up my desk.  I made the beds.  I made a yummy soup.  We did grocery shopping.  I visited mom and took her on a walk.

My husband cut roses from our abundant bushes and put them in vases all over the house.  I love him for this (and other things).  I got drunk on strawberry lemonade and vodka.  I pet the dogs and appreciated them for the loving beings that they are.  People who have personal relationships with animals know what I mean.

I read two essays by Anne Lamott on aging.  They are miraculous, and funny, and give me great peace.  She's deeply committed to Jesus, and that's okay with me.  If this is where she wants to assign her great love and equanimity, so be it.  I'll go with it.  It's  her rock, and I appreciate that she feels this way.

I listened to Judy Collins sing Amazing Grace.  A gift from God, or the universe, or the Great Goddess.  Whatever.

It was a few days filled with action to counter the craziness that is this existence in this world, at this time.

After weeks of deep and pervasive lethargy, this energy feels good.  

As I write this, I gaze at two photographs of my daughter: one when she was 8 weeks old, in her father's arms, and the other when she was 3, dressed in her Easter dress as she discovered the treats in her Easter basket, her blond ringlets hanging loosely around her face. 

Like a honey bee, buzzing around a glass of sweet Chablis, I experienced the best that life has to offer.  

That's the key: to notice and to appreciate when good things happen.  They happen all the time if you know how to be open to them.  They seem especially sweet when they follow a period of low energy and lack of enthusiasm for anything.  The Weight is heavy for many of us right now.  There is much to fret about, and we do it, with great gusto (I'm thinking Facebook).  I get so weary with it all.  The list of evil characters grows longer by the day and so I must look for the people who inspire.  The writers, the artists, the musicians, the humble and the spiritual.  Those who delight in a walk along the shore, or through the redwood forest, or by watching the birds at their feeders.  The people who share their garden photos -- the spectacular cacti in Arizona and the palm trees of Los Angeles.  The chickens running loose in the far north of California and the splashing waterfalls of the Sierra.

I hope you are finding your moments.

At Great Pond
the sun, rising,
scrapes his orange breast
on the thick pines,
and down tumble
a few orange feathers into
the dark water.
On the far shore
a white bird is standing
like a white candle ---
or a man, in the distance,
in the clasp of some meditation ---
while all around me the lilies
are breaking open again
from the black cave
of the night.
Later, I will consider
what I have seen ---
what it could signify ---
what words of adoration I might
make of it, and to do this
I will go indoors to my desk ---
I will sit in my chair ---
I will look back
into the lost morning
in which I am moving, now,
like a swimmer,
so smoothly,
so peacefully,
I am almost the lily ---
almost the bird vanishing over the water
on its sleeves of night.


Mary Oliver