These are the waning days of my 70th trip around the sun as I celebrate my birth Sunday April 14

April 11, 2019…Hour of Gold Reflected on a Gerbera Daisy

“Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart,

it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”

– A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)

Sometimes I have a difficult time being grateful. That always makes me feel shame, but I am, after all, just a tired and retired old lady and I have seen a lot of ugliness in my time here on the planet.

Sure, I have seen a lot of beauty and met some amazing people and had some personal satisfactions, but I am not one of those people who say they have no regrets. I have lots of regrets, and not as much for the things I haven’t done as for the thoughtless decisions and actions that dot the landscape of my life. It isn’t always easy to like the person you see in the mirror as you brush your teeth, but if you don’t find a way to do so those regrets will simple make you bitter and unhappy and unable to find your joy.

So, my prayer today is to find a way to embrace personal responsibility and acceptance for myself and to recognize those moments as special when I see clearly the gifts I have been given and my heart grows large with gratitude and though they will not be lasting they will return. I pray that I might remember that the dance of life is not a measured forward march in a straight line, but a series of sometimes delightful and sometimes awkward movements, places where the road grows dark and treacherous and it is a challenge just to keep the beat.

I must not be stopped by the shame of being unappreciative, for shame too has a place. I read once that the only shame is to have none. It is all in how we take the shame and turn it into something forward propelling and positive. I guess I could say I am grateful for the shame, and oh so happy to let it go.

— Love, Light and Laughter,

Zahn

Hello Beautiful Day!

I was lying on my back in a church yard when the wizened face of an elderly man loomed into view. He smiled and said “What a great day to be alive”! When I collected myself and started to reply I looked around and he was gone. Then it occurred to me that perhaps he wasn’t gone. Perhaps I simply couldn’t see him anymore and that felt right. I laid my head back down and took this photograph. The longer I live the more I realize I don’t need to know everything and in fact am not suppose to. If I just breathe and let the good energy flow I can be quite content just simply “BEING.

I do need to be reminded to breathe occasionally.

April 5, 2019 Emerging Lily or

Emerging Possibilities

Roger Ebert….Life Itself

“Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

I like this quote as it is filled with simple truth and words and yet is Hope.

Being kind starts with being kind to ourselves so that we can then open our hearts to share it. The thought must move from the mind to the core of our spirit where it can grow and blossom and bear fruit and scatter to the cosmos.

April 3, 2019 Petals of a Flower

“Don’t try to hog loneliness and keep it all to yourself. Share it with a special someone.”

― Jarod Kintz

The other day I was wandering in a public garden, taking photographs and watching people. My daughters always talk about how easily I get to know people and that I can’t stand in a grocery line for more than a few minutes without making a new friend. Now, in reality, these “new” friends are often what I call “new friends who are really old friends” and they are all around.

I once met a wizard all dressed up and on his way to a dance who had lost his hat. Another time it was a lady in the park who had a parrot inside her coat who peeked his head out occasionally and said hello.

Well, the gardens were full of “new friends who were really old friends”. I met a little girl named Shannon who ran from one flower to another with glee and actually squealed with delight.

As I wandered the gardens I met a lady in love who was looking for flowers for her garden wedding. Her name was Elizabeth and she was 73. She had lived alone since her husband’s death many years ago and never having had children had resigned herself to being alone. Then she was strolling along an old cobblestoned street where she spotted a lovely and colorful sign announcing the opening of an art show and welcoming people to enter. She was a bit chilled and decided to step in and warm herself. There, as she stood breathing in the scent of flowers in a painting, a gentleman came up beside her, softly caught her eye, and said “Art helps you see life more clearly.” I kid you not. That is exactly what she said. They are now planning a late April wedding.

One of the ladies working at the gardens bore a name tag that said Cami. I asked if her name was a shortened version of Camellia and she laughed and acknowledged it was, but hastened to add it was of Latin origin and did not refer to the flower of the same name. She was a recent immigrant from Equador. Her father, Enrique, was born and raised in Havana, Cuba, but left after the Revolution and moved to Equador, where he met and fell in love with Camellia’s mother. He died when she was a baby but she was named for his mother who was never able to leave Cuba and Camillia never knew her. Her mother told her that as an infant her father would rock her and tell her how beautiful she was, just like her “abuela”. I told her I too had lived in Cuba and that I was of the belief that meeting her grandmother was not necessary for she had her blood in her veins and that we are who we are because of all the people who have come before us, for we are their posterity.

Everyone has a story to tell and a purpose. Take time to get to know strangers and you too may find some “new friends who are really old friends”.

Am enjoying a lovely Spring with family in Oregon…Life is Good. 💜

Photo…Royal Star Japanese Magnolia………

I have always looked to the horizon as much as my mind will let me. I have given but a fleeting glance back at the sunsets, knowing darkness follows. I want to see the blazing colors as they kaleidoscope across the sky in ever changing hues of oranges, yellows, blues, and pinks, but it happens in such a rush that they often make me sad and I think of moments already gone. There is a part of me that likes to think they aren’t really gone, just existing on a different plane somewhere in the universe. Some days I really believe that. Some days the shadow says that is foolish. Other days it doesn’t seem to matter one iota. Today I want to take the moments and hold them tight and never let them go. Will I never learn? Moments aren’t to be gathered and horded. They have to exist by themselves and be set free to soar and ripple across the cosmos. It is such a hard lesson for me. The letting go so I might truly see the beauty instead of clutching and holding tight , afraid of the loss, does not come naturally to me. I am trying to learn and understand, and sometimes that just has to be enough.

Red Anemone….spotted this today….a Glimpse of the Divine….

The Great Mystery comforts me and reassures me that understanding is not always necessary.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

— Rumi

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

– Henry David Thoreau

PHOTO…Light Through Anemone…

Some days are really trying and I find it difficult to look beyond the sadness and weariness I feel. So many people seem to think only of themselves and not understand the truth in the old saying that “what affects one of us affects all of us”. If we try to be kind and caring and understanding and empathetic we make this old world a better place, not just for ourselves, but for everyone. I know that I struggle more than ever these days to find the faith and the courage I used to easily access in myself. I just know that I must continue to try. To give up would be the end of me and the person I have spent my life struggling and working to be. I need to lean on others who too are walking this path and finding ways to see the light. There are good deeds being done every minute and people finding the courage to stand tall in the face of ugliness. They are like beacons to me. I pray that I may find my way again.

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

Tulips!! They are from a greenhouse but beautiful and a glimpse of a Spring to come.

Musing from the Old Lady on the Sailboat…

THE AWAKENING

Every day I discover a new joy and a new wonder. Sometimes it’s been right there all along but I wasn’t able to see it. Do you ever think that there are layers to our lives and that those layers merge and reform and though the substance was there all along it takes on a new and wondrous look and feel? It’s like a kaleidoscope I used to have as a child. I played endlessly with it making new and more beautiful and unexpected delights, and yet the foundation for each was always there. I just couldn’t see the magic.

Our lives are continuous motion and ever changing. We have a choice to embrace the changes or not. Enjoy the process, enjoy the journey, for it may ultimately bring you to a far grander place.

I know sometimes this old world seems like such a mess, but if we try we just might find the BLESS in the mess. ❤️

“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Pink Tulip…Spring Equinox

Today I walked in sleet falling from low dark clouds, passing by daffodils and beneath full blooming Japanese Magnolias and breathed in their sweetness. It is the Equinox today and I truly felt I was teetering on the fulcrum between Winter and Spring. As I balanced I danced and giggled and tilted my face toward the sky and tasted the icy crystals at the same time I inhaled the scent of Promise. I felt full of delight. It only lasted a moment and yet is was one of those “everlasting” moments, and so I carefully wrapped it in shiny metallic paper with a sheen of violet and silver and placed it carefully away in a secret and magical place in my heart. I know one day I will, with a smile and a tear, unwrap it, and remember.

LaceCap Hydrangea…

“The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

― Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

Spring has come to The Chesapeake. The mornings and evenings are still cool and delightful. I often sit watching the return of the veteran osprey to their nests and the young ones in search of a mate to make a nest and raise a new generation. I spot eagles and herons fishing, amazed at their grace and comfort and ease in their world. I admit to a certain amount of jealousy.

In that magical time just before the sun rises I hear the migration of the geese as they make their way back to Canada and pause to feed in the surrounding fields and creeks. The other day I watched a red fox as he lurked in the stillness of the brush along the water’s edge and an otter swim across, leaving lovely ripples in his wake. Along the sandy shore a ground hog lumbered along, shaking himself as if trying to fully awake from the winter’s slumber.

Living so close to Nature gives me peace. I do not suffer the world of man well at all. I cannot understand the meanness and ugliness that abounds there. Well, I understand that much of it is fear and that fear is fueled by people who know how to take advantage of this fear and give people a justification for their hateful actions.

Understanding the mechanisms does not help explain the lack of courage to educate and listen to your heart and to take risks and chances to change both ourselves and thus the world. So many people hide behind these masses of people who wear masks of evil to try and scare others into joining their journey of negativity. The sorrow I feel wells up and threatens to drown me. I have no answers. I can only do whatever it takes to survive and to help those I can as I journey. For me it is my photography and my musings. I try to make a difference in “my small, individual way”.