Monday, October 31, 2011

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.




Saturday, October 29, 2011

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
 
 
 


Friday, October 28, 2011

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!
 

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

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

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

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

Thursday, October 20, 2011

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. 

Friday, October 14, 2011

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

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

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.
 

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

be careful

 
"Be careful who you hate,
it might just be someone you love."
- Joni Christian

Sunday, October 9, 2011

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

Monday, October 3, 2011

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
 

Sunday, October 2, 2011

love at large

"Love answers all the questions
that judgment fails to hear."