Scattering a Bit of Joy

I took a bike ride this morning first thing. It felt so good to ride through the neighborhood on paths and streets, up hill and down, a gentle breeze in my face. What a beautiful way to start my day.

Though there is much going on in the world that I could talk about today, I won’t. Instead I plan on

Scattering a Bit of Joy

I’m going to share a few favorite poems and quotes along with recent photos I’ve made on my walks and a couple of flower photos from earlier this week.

I think that scattering a bit of joy is another form of activism. In today’s world many of us are feeling Apocalypse Overwhelm. We can feed our souls and recover by focusing on and spreading beauty, love, and light.

Sometimes, when I fear

the small light I bring

isn’t big enough or bright

enough, I think of that night

on the beach years ago

when every step I took

in the cool wet sand turned

a glowing, iridescent blue—and the waves themselves

were a flashing greenish hue—imagine we could do

what 7.9 billion

one-celled plankton can do—can shine when it’s dark,

can shine when agitated,

can shine with our own

inner light and trust when we all

ring the tiny light we have,

it’s enough to illumine the next step

in the long stretch of night.

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Centering is a verb. It is an ongoing process… Centering is  not a model, but a way of balancing, a spiritual resource in times of  conflict, an imagination. It seems in certain lights to be an alchemical  vessel, a retort, which bears an integration of purposes, an  integration of levels of consciousness. It can be called to, like a  divine ear.

[…]

Centering… is the discipline of bringing in (i.e., of sympathy or  empathy) rather than of leaving out. Of saying “Yes, Yes” to what we  behold. To what is holy and to what is unbearable. But my  experience tells me now that there is an important crucial stage of  saying Yes to a No. For resistance also must be embraced. Not only  accepting resistance but practicing it.

   — M. C. Richards, Four Virgins of the Elk Dance

HOW TO BE A POET

to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill — more of each

than you have — inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your poems,

doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of the silence, like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays,

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.

  — Wendell Berry

We are not apart from nature, we are a part of Nature.

  — John Paul Caponigro

Joy is inexpressibly more than happiness,

Happiness befalls people; happiness is fate,

while people cause joy to bloom inside themselves.

Joy is plainly a good season for the heart;

joy is the ultimate achievement of which human beings are capable.

   — Rilke

Widening Circles                         

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I’ve been circling for thousands of years

and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?

If to be enchanted is to fully participate in the world, to be open both to its transparency and its mystery, then to be disenchanted is its opposite. To be disenchanted is to be shut down.

   — Sharon Blacke , The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday

 May you walk in beauty (and scatter a bit of joy as you go).