This is the path I follow down the hill to the park area I like to walk in.
Today the sun is shining on a snow-covered world. Looking out my windows I still feel like I’m
Living In a Snow Globe
just before you shake it up to see the snow flakes falling. The trees and plants still have coatings of snow clinging to them from last week’s snowstorm and some of the evergreens in the neighborhood have boughs bending almost to the ground because of their heavy covering of snow.
Look carefully around you and recognize
the luminosity of souls. Sit beside those
who draw you to that.— Rumi
I cannot remember a string of days when the trees around me were so spectacularly beautiful day after day with their white coated limbs stretching towards blue skies above. Every morning I am dumbfounded again with the extravagant gorgeousness of this world.
A simple walk among the trees becomes a meditation and a prayer.
“Most mornings I’m up to see the sun, and that rising of the light moves me very much, and I’m used to thinking and feeling in words, so it sort of just happens. I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and … almost involuntary in my life,” she says. “And when I talk about prayer, I mean really … what Rumi says in that wonderful line, ‘there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.’” — Mary Oliver
Despite the beauty of it all I am not longing for more snow anytime soon. I have heard that it is still difficult getting around city streets in Minneapolis and even here in the suburbs we’re running out of places to put all of the snow that we remove from driveways, streets, parking lots, and sidewalks. And though the paths are getting well trodden where I like to walk, they are narrow and uneven and sometimes challenging to walk on.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.
— Mary Oliver, Mysteries, Yes
This second Sunday in January I am celebrating mid-twenty degree temperatures. I am so thankful that we are not having below zero temperatures or lots of wind. For the past four days I’ve gotten outside for a walk in the neighborhood each day. Every time I take a walk I pause every now and then simply to look all around me at the wondrous beauty of the trees. It makes me smile to soak in the miracles of each moment.
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
— Mary Oliver, It Was Early
Are you also feeling blessed on this beautiful January Sunday?
May you walk in beauty.
0 Comments