Pink Greenhouse Cyclamen… “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” ― Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back The world of man often confounds and confuses me. We have so removed ourselves from Love that we act and react from FEAR. We create illusions and invent truths and call it Honesty. I do not have the mental fortitude, nor the stomach for the meanness and the hate I see being flung around like mud from a mired tire as it spins for control. May we come to understand that we are all connected to the Universe and indeed what affects one of us affects all of us. May we be liberated from our fear and face one another with Love and Hope. and may I never stop believing…

Yesterday…Shadows of tree trunks on the snow….

It has happened again. Sometime yesterday I lost my oomph, my punch, my vitality, my gusto, my enthusiasm. Hopefully it is simply misplaced and if I don’t panic I will find it.

In the afternoon I thought for a moment it had returned, only to discover it was just a caffeine overdose from a double shot of espresso masquerading as my vim and verve.

This has happened before and sometimes it isn’t so much I lost it as it connives with my zing to take a holiday. When this happens there isn’t much I can do but hibernate and wait. Sometimes, when it returns, it has a renewed sense of snappiness. I imagine it lounging on a beach in some delightfully warm latitude, soaking up the rays of a sun whose ambition it is to rejuvenate, and sipping a lovely fruity drink with chunks of pineapple and lots of maraschino cherries served in a frosted glass and adorned with those marvelous tropical drink umbrellas.

After these kinds of sojourns from me my oomph has been known to return with a delightful vibrancy and make me jump up and do a jig, the kind where I snap my fingers and dance in triple time. When that happens I am grateful.

Other times my oomph comes slinking back like an old dilapidated jalopy that has traveled hard and is low on gas.

Even though I wish it had come back like a souped up roadster, maybe a bright red XKE Jag, I am always glad it’s back and not crashed on some lonely mountain road over a cliff, lost to me forever.

I have a couple of ideas where I might have lost it yesterday morning and I think it is worth revisiting those places where snow covered the hillsides and cold creeks babbled though the woods and the world was magical, the sunrise casting soft pink onto the banks of snow. That was before I arrived at my job substitute teaching classes of miscreants with no desire to learn. If I don’t find it there I will assume it has indeed escaped for a respite from the short days and long cold nights and I will go back to my boat and sleep.

Winter Wind Chills!!!

Gotta love Hothouses!!

“Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.”

― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

February 9…Prayer Plant I chanced to see in the corner of a greenhouse. I only spotted it because light was streaming in and illuminated parts of it while other parts were almost hidden in shadow.

I love the mystery I find in nature. Sometimes when I wander I see things that call to me and I realize that if I didn’t stop I would miss something wondrous and marvelous and totally mysterious, something beyond understanding. And so I stop.

When I was a young woman I yearned to understand and to know all the secrets I knew were out there. I held my breath in the presence of the tiny glimpses I was given and hoped and prayed for understanding and knowledge. It never came. I could scream and beg the Cosmic Forces for Enlightenment all I wanted, but to no avail, and I had to settle for simply knowing there was so much more.

Then somewhere along the line I stopped trying so hard to understand what cannot be understood. I used to call it being weary, but maybe weariness just slowed me down and was a good thing. I discovered that it was only by exhaling and letting go would I get just enough of a sense of the Divine to make me smile.

It is almost as if I am a child who wonders without panic. Some days I forget and feel lost but there are enough of those moments of “ah ha” to sustain me. It is not about having faith that all will be revealed, or finding just the right Book to search for the answers. It is about having faith that I do not need the answers. I just need to let the Divine in and feel the joy and the love.

That is enough.

That is everything.

“Ah, but I was so much older then,

I’m younger than that now.”

Bob Dylan

February 5, HOPE…Hyacinth from greenhouse

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”

― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

I am full of HOPE and something deep inside of me tells me to HOLD ON. Life is an unfolding and yet even as it unfolds it merges, layer upon layer. It is a melding of moments in constant change and surprise and the revelations are of unimaginable beauty.

May we open ourselves to the possibilities ahead with faith and not fear. Z