Fallen Impatiens Blossom

Sometimes I am sorely disappointed in myself. I see other people who seem to have life so much more under control. They don’t seem to see the world in ways that bring sadness and discouragement. It’s like they never walk in the shadows.

“No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entrance. No one else can see the world the way you see it. No one else can feel your life the way you feel it. Thus it is impossible to ever compare two people because each stands on such different ground. When you compare yourself to others, you are inviting envy into your consciousness; it can be a dangerous and destructive guest.”

― John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

July 22… I took a short cut through an old alleyway and paused in the shade. A vine growing from a crack in the bricks caught my eye and reminded me that I often see beauty when I calm my spirit and slow my vision from darting here and there and simply see what is in the quiet.

“With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.”

― William Wordsworth

Red Portulaca

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

― Mother Teresa

I am so tired of all the hatred and the violence and the revenge and the maligning and the maliciousness. It breaks me down and makes me so sad I think my heart will break. I am just an old Hippy Chick, living on a old sailboat who still believes in Love. I have to hang on to the Faith that there is purpose unto heaven and I seek solace in the Natural World and quietly pray as my little boat rocks me. I try to lift the world a bit with my photographs and simple words. It is all I have to give. May it make a small ripple of goodness in this Cosmic Sea we call The Universe.

“One love, one heart, one destiny.”

― Bob Marley

July 11, 2019

“Love Comes In Time”

…John Fred (and the Playboys)

This old trip I’ve been on sure hasn’t run in a straight line. I mean I have traveled paths that twisted round and round on each other so much I wasn’t always sure if I was coming or going, though I know that’s not true. I have come to creeks to cross where the path seemed to end there and yet I hitched up my skirt and stepped into the cold water and felt the rounded stones from ages gone by and made my way across carrying only Faith that said “git along little girl”.

My trip has taken me to people and places where the lessons have been so hard I thought to just turn and run. Sometimes the sky grows dark and as the colors mute so does the light in my mind’s eye.

Others times I have climbed steep paths till there opened before me meadows filled with wild flowers and I so threw caution to the wind, stripped myself of baggage and clothes and danced in the evening light till the moon rose and the stars came out. Part of me longed to stay but knowing as Robert Frost once said, “way leads on to way” I had miles to go and strange and wondrous sights to see, and oh so many lessons.

I believe my journey is purposeful, even if I do not understand what that truly means. I have come to understand that if I am to be happy I must keep on truckin’ and that along the way I will, from time and time, come across a situation where there is a lesson to be learned that I am sure I already took and got a passing grade. Maybe I got a C- and not an A, but I passed. I whine because I do not want to take this lesson again. However, I seem to know that in order to move on I will have to study this one again.

Today’s lesson was this….

The Love is in the journey, not JUST the destination. In the end it is the labor of Love that endures, the tangible does not. I lost some pottery today that I had lovingly made and had great hopes for. The pieces were destroyed and though they are gone the experience of creating them can never be taken away from me. The joy really was in the doing. Sounds simple, but I have a feeling this won’t be the last time Life gives me this lesson. It, of course, wasn’t about pottery. It was about understanding what is truly important in this journey.

How much have you loved?

Photo is one I took in Bath Co Kentucky when I drove there for my sister Kathy’s funeral a year ago. Oh how I love her.

I have been working on a book, historical fiction, about my family. It is so difficult to go between the dates on headstones and understand what happened in those years.

I wonder also at missing people I never met. I am reminded of a quote from the movie Amistad where Cinque says…I will call into the past far back to the beginning of time and beg them to come. I will reach back and draw them into me and they must come. For at this moment I am the whole reason they have existed at all. -Cinque

That is not arrogance but in reality we are who we are because all those people stretching back into time existed when and where they did and by studying them I honor them and they teach me. When I traverse these hills and ford the creeks and stop to watch the sun set in the western sky and gaze at the light playing tricks on the water so it sparkles like finely cut jewels and when I stand so still that I can hear the breeze whisper to me, I am struck by how the land keeps the memories. It holds the laughter and the tears, the joys and the heartaches. I feel connected to this land of my birth.