All Things Bright & Beautiful - January Dreaming

Hi Folks,

As we settle into January-

The beginning of the year is when beginnings and endings overlap. I’ve always found that to be a powerful idea. Most beginnings have an intimate relationship to endings. Winter melts into spring. Spring waves her light green scarf in a sweet farewell as summer saunters, then swaggers in. Autumn shakes hands with summer, bows then turns with its basket of harvest into the shortening days.

The arrival of a new year comes with all the expectation of a new child. Something made mostly of goodness and possibility was born at midnight on January 1.

For now, while we live wrapped the snowy prayer shawl of January, may you find something bright and beautiful to frame the unfolding days. May you find quiet time (which is the natural rhythm of then season). May you dream of seed catalogues (which OMG are the most wonderful metaphor I can think of for unabashed hope and longing).

May we all listen in the silence to what is calling most powerfully to our spirits, minds and hearts.

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Here’s a link to an interview with Paradigms about my new album, A Great Wild Mercy, that aired New Years Eve and is not available for replay. Thank you to Baruch Zeichner, Producer/Host for inviting me to participate in this open hearted exchange. The themes of presence, kindness, hope and mercy, ran through the conversation, and seemed a lovely way to start the new year. Here’s the link.

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One Inch Photos

Ive gotten so many lovely messages about my one inch photos. Sometimes the world gets so darn big…but in sometimes in viewing the small, the whole and sacred, there is something that reminds me of hope.

Practice

My encouragement today is to take your smart phone (most of us have them now…and holy smokes who would have ever imaged such a thing) and take a photo of something close up.

Think simple…the bricks of your building, the droplets of water on the window, a faithful boot or favorite cup or hand knit mittens, your dog’s soft ears, your cat’s amazing eyes, anything that is familiar but when you look just a little more closely becomes more real, more beautiful.

Question

Tell us what it felt like to see….really see… the details of your life in a new way.

Note….

I’ve been snorkeling in the tropics this week and returned to the snowy midwest yesterday. So my one inch photos are of things close up in Curacao.

More about this later…but I’m just saying Sea Turtles have to be one of the more amazing critters on this planet. Sea Turtles rule. Really.

The reefs are still pretty healthy in Curacao although stressed as all reefs are due to climate change. I spent every day here taking in an endless variety of coral and fish and birds. Floating at the edge of an abyss of aquamarine blue…schools of fish rising from the expanse. Floating quietly above a reef slowing taking in the smallest iridescent creatures in the tropical light. Thank you to the Maker of Reefs for turtles and trunkfish, for beech trees and white tail deer, for sunsets over an ocean or across the snowy prairie. In the words of Brian Doyle “And so, Amen.”