Halloween!!!

A grandmother

pretends she doesn't know

who you are on Halloween. 

 ~Erma Bombeck

Several readers have asked for a recent picture of me:

That's me on the right drinking yet another nonfat latte!

I wonder if my grandmother would recognize me?

 Happy Halloween!

 

These witches are from 'A Brewed Awakening' drive through in Port Angeles

and that's Fredrick as a chicken with his mother.



Olympic Discovery Trail

Today my daughter Faith and I walked the Olympic Discovery Trail near Port Angeles, WA.  I wanted to share the autumnal glory of the area with you.

 

 

"She calls it "stick season," this slow disrobing of summer,
leaf by leaf, till the bores of tall trees rattle and scrape in the wind."
-   Eric Pinder

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the
landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.
Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show." -   Andrew Wyeth

 

"Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn."-   Elizabeth Lawrence

 

 

 



be the comfort

 

"Please remember,

it's what you ARE that heals,

not what you KNOW."

-Carl Jung

 

as a know-it-all, i so want to remember this!

 

bitterness

"Forgiveness is not forgetting;

it has more to do with how

something is remembered.

It's not remembered

with bitterness."

 

Rev. Douglas R. Baker

the point of practice

"The point of spiritual practice is to develop a mind so open

that it can experience great pleasure and great pain

with spaciousness, compassion, awareness, and energy."

- Sharon Salzberg

brooding over muck

"Rake the muck this way.  Rake the muck that way.

It will still be muck.  In the time you are brooding,

you could be on your way, stringing pearls

for the delight of heaven."

(Hasidic teaching)

 

Art: The Brooding Woman - Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

 

brooding: preoccupied with depressing,

morbid, or painful memories or thoughts. 

 muck: soft, moist, farmward manure. 

or defamatory remarks.  (aren't those the same?)

 

 found myself brooding over my muck today.

the idea of raking it in one direction

and then another shows how absurd & pointless

 it is to try to move it around.  

put down the rake. pick up the pearls.

especially that one pearl of great price. 

magpie mind

"Suffering cleanses us of the falsities that have accumulated in our hearts.

So often our minds are like magpies.

We pick up and take on everthing that glitters,

even though it may have no substance. 

In a magpie's nest, one finds random collections of colourful but useless debris.

The fire of suffering cleanses completely the falsities

to which our longing has attached itself. 

This liberates us from the emptiness of false belonging and

 allows us to belong in a real and truthful way in our lives again."

 

from John O'Donohue's "Eternal Echoes - Exploring our Yearning to Belong"  p.162

watching autumn

This poem is from Joan Chittister's e-newsletter, Vision & Viewpoint.

It reminded me of a recent camping trip to Dosewallips during which

I sat silently with my husband in the forest on this bench,

watching and listening to the falling leaves.

A Leaf
by Bronislaw Maj

A leaf, one of the last, parts from a maple branch:
it is spinning in the transparent air of October, falls
on a heap of others, stops, fades. No one
admired its entrancing struggle with the wind,
followed its flight, no one will distinguish it now
as it lies among other leaves, no one saw
what I did. I am
the only one.

 

This photo is the trail we walked upon.

Such a lovely Autumn day it was.

Such an honor to be there to watch the leaves falling.

 

be careful

 

"Be careful who you hate,

it might just be someone you love."

- Joni Christian

autumn change

"Change is a measure of time and,

in the autumn, time seems speeded up. 

What was is not and never again will be;

what is is change."-  Edwin Teale

Art - 'Seasons of Change - Autumn' by Sally Van Driest from here

the mark of beauty

"The marks and wounds that suffering leave on us

are eventually places of beauty."

- John O'Donohue

 

picture of a twisted tree I encountered at Dosewallips Park, WA

 

love at large

"Love answers all the questions

that judgment fails to hear."