savouringtheish

[savouringtheish]

[savouringtheish]

Blackberries

In the early morning an old woman

is picking blackberries in the shade.

It will be too hot later

but right now there’s dew.

Some berries fall: those are for squirrels.

Some are unripe, reserved for bears.

Some go into the metal bowl.

Those are for you, so you may taste them

just for a moment.

That’s good times: one little sweetness

after another, then quickly gone.

Once, this old woman

I’m conjuring up for you

would have been my grandmother.

Today it’s me.

Years from now it might be you,

if you’re quite lucky.

The hands reaching in

among the leaves and spines

were once my mother’s.

I’ve passed them on.

Decades ahead, you’ll study your own

temporary hands, and you’ll remember.

Don’t cry, this is what happens.

Look! The steel bowl

is almost full. Enough for all of us.

The blackberries gleam like glass,

like the glass ornaments

we hang on trees in December

to remind ourselves to be grateful for snow.

Some berries occur in sun,

but they are smaller.

It’s as I always told you:

the best ones grow in shadow.

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“Each of us is given 
only so many mornings to do it – 
to look around and love

the oily fur of our lives, 
the hoof and the grass-stained muzzle. »

Mary Oliver, from “The Deer,” House of Light

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Just reading to herself...

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There's a comforting thought at the close of the day When I'm weary and lonely and sad, That sort of grips hold of this crusty old heart And bids it be merry and glad. It gets in my soul and it drives out the blues And finally thrills me through and through, It's just a sweet memory that chants the refrain I'm glad I touched shoulders with you. Did you know you were brave, did you know you were strong Did you know there was one leaning hard, Did you know that I listened and waited and prayed And was cheered by your simplest word. Did you know that I longed for that smile on your face For the sound of your voice ringing true, Did you know I grew stronger and better because I had merely touched shoulders with you. I'm glad I live; that I battle and strive For the place that I know I must fill, I'm thankful for sorrows, I'll meet with a grin What fortune will send, good or ill. I may not have wealth, I may not be great But I know I shall always be true, For I have in my life that courage you gave When once I touched shoulders with you. Author Unknown~

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Mountain air ⛰✨ (at Fernie Trails Alliance)

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...All important ideas must include the trees, the mountains, and the rivers. To understand many things you must reach out of your own condition. For how many years did I wander slowly through the forest. What wonder and glory I would have missed had I ever been in a hurry! Beauty can both shout and whisper, and still it explains nothing. The point is, you're you, and that's for keeps. - Mary Oliver

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...You are not a troubled guest on this earth, you are not an accident amidst other accidents you were invited from another and greater night than the one from which you have just emerged. Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window toward the mountain presence of everything that can be, what urgency calls you to your one love? What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky? Is it waiting in the fertile sea? In the trees beyond the house? In the life you can imagine for yourself? In the open and lovely white page on the waiting desk? - David Whyte

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In the wake of the death of a loved one, we can find ourselves resigned to the work of mourning. In the midst of that resignation, though, I think that it is possible to discover a sense of our mourning as an incredible privilege. We are, surely each in our own way, given stewardship to the perspective and self-narrative of a person we loved. We're tasked with bringing that perspective back into the world, tending to its affect and keeping watch as it changes, through us and through others.

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Follow Your Bliss The divine manifestation is ubiquitous, Only our eyes are not open to it… . Awe is what moves us forward… . Live from your own center… . The divine lives within you. The separateness apparent in the world is secondary. Beyond the world of opposites is an unseen, but experienced, unity and identity in us all. Today the planet is the only proper “in group.” Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. You must return with the bliss and integrate it. The return is seeing the radiance is everywhere. The world is a match for us. We are a match for the world. The spirit is the bouquet of nature… Sanctify the place you are in. Follow your bliss…

–Joseph Campbell

Painting: Leon Wyczólkowski, Polish (1852-1936) Spring, 1933

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The Man Watching

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes that a storm is coming, and I hear the far-off fields say things I can't bear without a friend, I can't love without a sister. The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on across the woods and across time, and the world looks as if it had no age: the landscape, like a line in the psalm book, is seriousness and weight and eternity. What we choose to fight is so tiny! What fights with us is so great. If only we would let ourselves be dominated as things do by some immense storm, we would become strong too, and not need names. When we win it's with small things, and the triumph itself makes us small. What is extraordinary and eternal does not want to be bent by us. I mean the Angel who appeared to the wrestlers of the Old Testament: when the wrestlers' sinews grew long like metal strings, he felt them under his fingers like chords of deep music. Whoever was beaten by this Angel (who often simply declined the fight) went away proud and strengthened and great from that harsh hand, that kneaded him as if to change his shape. Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings. Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Robert Bly

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Mathematics is not a book confined within a cover and bound between brazen clasps, whose contents it needs only patience to ransack; it is not a mine, whose treasures may take long to reduce into possession, but which fill only a limited number of veins and lodes; it is not a soil, whose fertility can be exhausted by the yield of successive harvests; it is not a continent or an ocean, whose area can be mapped out and its contour defined: it is limitless as that space which it finds too narrow for its aspirations.

Mathematician James Joseph Sylvester, born 202 years ago today, penned the most beautiful love letter to mathematics ever written.  (via explore-blog)

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I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible; to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise...

Dawna Markova

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Three Gratitudes

Every night before I go to sleep I say out loud Three things that I'm grateful for, All the significant, insignificant Extraordinary, ordinary stuff of my life. It's a small practice and humble, And yet, I find I sleep better Holding what lightens and softens my life Ever so briefly at the end of the day. Sunlight, and blueberries, Good dogs and wool socks, A fine rain, A good friend, Fresh basil and wild phlox, My father's good health, My daughter's new job, The song that always makes me cry, Always at the same part, No matter how many times I hear it. Decent coffee at the airport, And your quiet breathing, The stories you told me, The frost patterns on the windows, English horns and banjos, Wood Thrush and June bugs, The smooth glassy calm of the morning pond, An old coat, A new poem, My library card, And that my car keeps running Despite all the miles. And after three things, More often than not, I get on a roll and I just keep on going, I keep naming and listing, Until I lie grinning, Blankets pulled up to my chin, Awash with wonder At the sweetness of it all. - Carrie Newcomer

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Your life, all of your life, is your path to awakening. By resisting or not dealing with its challenges, you stay asleep to Reality. Pay attention to what life is trying to reveal to you. Say yes to its fierce, ruthless, and loving grace.

Adyashanti (via aspiritualwarrior)

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Keeping Quiet

Pablo Neruda Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still for once on the face of the earth, let's not speak in any language; let's stop for a second, and not move our arms so much. It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines; we would all be together in a sudden strangeness. Fishermen in the cold sea would not harm whales and the man gathering salt would not look at his hurt hands. Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire, victories with no survivors, would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing. What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. Life is what it is about... If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Now I'll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go.