The first drops of rain

The first drops of rain always bring a smile on our faces.  The smell of wet soil, the damp grass, and the slosh of puddles under our feet makes us want to dance with wanton joy.  Rains make a heart go romantic.  Ever danced in the rain?  The feeling is inexplicably beautiful.  Hold your sweetheart’s hand and walk in the rain while the clouds play cupid.

~ G. K. Chesterton

Listen…

 

The wind blows hard among the pines
Toward the beginning
Of an endless past.
Listen: you’ve heard everything.

~ Shinkichi Takahashi, Zen Poems of China and Japan, Lucien Stryk, p. 125

Noticing

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.  And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.

~ Daniel Goleman

Winter has been teaching me about itself this year, putting on all kinds of displays that I might never have noticed without this commitment to go outside every day.  I am grateful to finally be noticing, and for the lessons and the gifts I’ve received as a result of noticing.

There is no path

For the discovery of truth there is no path…

~ J. Krishnamurti

Whirling and flowing

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.

~ John Muir

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

Under the willow

The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair admist the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Restoration area

What do I want to take home from my summer vacation?  Time.  The wonderful luxury of being at rest.  The days when you shut down the mental machinery that keeps life on track and let life simply wander.  The days when you stop planning, analyzing, thinking and just are.  Summer is my period of grace.

~ Ellen Goodman

(I will be cross posting this at Life in the Bogs today as it seems to fit both blogs.  It should also be noted that this bird may well be the same playful bird pictured in an earlier post but he showed up at a different spot on a different day.)

Summer flowers

a butterfly deigns
to come and dance…
summer flowers

~ Issa, 1806

Round and open

You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

~ Rumi