All posts by Joyce

What a Wonderful World

Indeed!  What a truly, wonderful, spectacular world!!

From the BBC, Lonely Planet, this video has beautiful photographs of the planet’s wonders with David Attenborough’s voice reading the words from “What A Wonderful World”.

Enjoy your World!!

 

“What A Wonderful World” (Song Lyrics),

Written by: George David Weiss, George Douglas and Bob Thiele

I see trees of green,

red roses too.
I see them bloom,
for me and you.
And I think to myself,
what a wonderful world. I see skies of blue,
And clouds of white.
The bright blessed day,
The dark sacred night.
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.
Half-Rainbow-WatertonThe colors of the rainbow,
So pretty in the sky.
Are also on the faces,
Of people going by,
I see friends shaking hands.
Saying, “How do you do?”
They’re really saying,
“I love you”. I hear babies cry,
I watch them grow,
They’ll learn much more,
Than I’ll ever know.
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world. Yes, I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.
Oh yeah.

 

May It Be A Good Day

The video below provides ten minutes of beautiful images, wisdom filled words, and a simple and profound perspective that may change your days.  Take a minute (well, ten minutes).  I promise it will be worth it…

Time and a sense of wonder.  Amazing what depth they bring to your hours and your sense of gratitude.

Time and wonder – I hope you can give those gifts to yourself today.

Spring’s Benediction

Winter’s serene time and space has left me open and in-tune to the minute changes, nuances, and majesty of Spring’s unfolding.  Day by day wonders are absorbed on a soul level.   There is a deep comprehension of all the powerful growth that the earth’s veins are sprouting forth.

It is felt, it is known, it is heard, it is experienced.

Red BudsRed Buds, Blue SkyMay 12

“The peace and beauty of a spring day had descended upon the earth like a benediction. ”
– Kate Chopin

 

 

“When spring comes the grass grows by itself. ”
– Tao Te Ching

 

 

 

 

“It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before.” -Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Listen to the Trees – A Gallery of Photos

This morning’s tree song was mesmerizing.  Their movement and expression held me.  Swaying, bending, rustling, growing, being.  I hung out with them for a long time, seeing with my heart and feeling with my eyes.  Still , I watched through the window as they danced…

Then, as if by magic, I found these words by Hermann Hesse that I’d never read before.  He understood the dancing, singing, and wisdom filled trees.

At the end of the words by Hesse is my gallery of trees…

Tall Trees, Blue Sky with Sun Star“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farm boy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

*Slide show will load below

 

Melting

 “I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting as it were, into the system of beings, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.”  -Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Pond, Beaver Lake RoadPond Melt

Everywhere water is flowing, moving, seeking new adventures.  Awakening the earth, trees, sprouts, bushes and bears.  The melting brings a sweet song and a green promise.

What will you make of the promise of Spring?

“Because when the spring comes,

it melts the snow one flake at a time”

-Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Spring rain conveyed

under the trees in drops”

-Matsuo Basho

Pond with Light Prism

 “Daughter of heaven and earth, coy Spring,

With sudden passion languishing,

Teaching barren moors to smile,

Painting pictures mile on mile,

Holds a cup of cowslip wreaths

Whence a smokeless incense breathes.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love on Tiny Hooves

Fawn

 

Yes, love does come in the door in many ways.

Seeing the beauty of creation in all the wild ones, knowing every life is a gift –

how can you not?

 

“Your growing antlers,’ Bambi continued, ‘are proof of your intimate place in the forest, for of all the things that live and grow only the trees and the deer shed their foliage each year and replace it more strongly, more magnificently, in the spring.”
Felix Salten, Bambi’s Children

 

Creation’s Dawn

The morning stars were resplendent as this new day unfolded.

Remembering that we all live in creation’s dawn is rejuvenating, exhilarating and liberating!  We can always start anew bringing our best and most creative selves to this newest dawn.

“…I also live in ‘creation’s dawn.’

The morning stars still sing together,

Night-Sky-2012-January-1038x576and the world,

not

yet half made,

becomes more

beautiful every day.”

-John Muir

Blue Sky, Tall Trees & Sun Burst

 

Morning has broken like the first morning, blackbird has spoken like the first bird.  Praise for the singing!  Praise for the morning!”        

     Morning Has Broken (Song Lyrics, Cat Stevens)

 

Every morning the world is created.  Under the orange sticks of the sun the heaped ashes of the night turn into leaves again and fasten themselves to the high branches—and the ponds appear like black cloth on which are painted islands of summer lilies.  If it is your nature to be happy you will swim away along the soft trails for hours, your imagination alighting everywhere.  And if your spirit carries within it the thorn that is heavier than lead—if it’s all you can do to keep on trudging—there is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what is wanted—each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, every morning, whether or not you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not you have ever dared to pray.”

-Morning Poem, Mary Oliver

Manatee Springs Water Lillies

 

Sail Away From Safe Harbor. Explore. Dream. Discover.

April!

Full of rain showers and promise, budding possibilities, growth in every molecular moment!

Red Buds, Blue Sky

 

The earth is singing of new life.  Trees radiating their energy.  Water flowing.  Melting, absorbing, being….

Time to get immersed in the wonders all around.

Uncomplicate.  Be amazed. Feel the majesty.

 

“Maintaining a complicated life is a great way to

6020_1129586154853_6748046_n

avoid changing it.”

-Elaine St. James

“There are years that ask

questions and years that answer”

-Zora Neale Hurston

 

Raven Child Portrait

“Keep walking, though there is no where to get to.

Don’t try to see through the distances.

That’s not for human beings.

Move within, but don’t move the way that fear makes you move”

-Rumi

Swiftcurrent Lake

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the

things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.  So throw

off the bowlines.  Sail away from safe harSan Juan Island Sunsetbor.  Catch the trade

winds in your sails.

Explore.  Dream.

Discover.”

-Mark Twain

Here Comes The Sun

Bright sun shining day!

In northwest Montana, Spring comes slowly – a gradual awakening, full of fits and starts.  Beautiful warmth in the daytime, back to freezing at night.  Comfortable transition.  Exciting anticipation.  The earth waking up, baby critters on the way, red buds on shrubs by the river, cottonwoods showing bright yellow…

Yes!  Here Comes The Sun, and I say, “It’s all right!”