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Sweet Breathing

What To Remember Upon Waking

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What to Remember Upon Waking by David Whyte.

I’m endeavoring, and am successful more and more often, to remember to pause, to settle, to be grateful, before moving into the plans and tasks, upon waking…

“In that first
hardly noticed
moment
in which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
that closes
the moment
you begin your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To become human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be
what urgency
calls you to your
one love?

What shape waits
in the seed of you
to grow and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?

In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?”

-David Whyte

Sweet Breathing

There Is Only One Question

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Spring continues to unfold,  with the absorbing music of life bubbling just beneath the surface.  I feel it.

Parker J. Palmer’s words resonated deeply with me this morning as he wrote the following words as a prelude to Mary Oliver’s poem – both his words and Mary’s poem follow.   They speak to me of of season of rebirth in northwest Montana and of Love.

“Spring arrived on my patch of the planet last week, but it’s 25° here as I write! To encourage the season to show up more fully, here’s Mary Oliver with her spot-on description of “the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring.”

I’m especially grateful for the profound reminder in the pivotal line of this poem: “There is only one question: how to love this world.”

Oliver illustrates love for the world not with a Valentine sentiment, but with a black bear “just risen from sleep” coming down the mountain with “her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love.”

Wild animals “love the world” because they depend on it for their well-being. We are dependent, too, no matter how arrogantly we pretend that we are self-sufficient.

There’s only one way for us to survive and thrive. We must learn to love the earth and each other with the ferocity of a mother bear—saying “NO!” to everything that threatens that which we love, and “YES!” to all that gives it life…”

-Parker J. Palmer

“Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring

down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of eary spring

I think of her, her four black fists flickering the gravel, her tongue

like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question:

how to love this world. I think of her rising like  black and leafy lodge

to sharpen her claws against the silence of the trees. Whatever else

my life is with its poems and its music and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness coming down the mountain, breathing and tasting,

all day I think of her — her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love.”

-Mary Oliver

 

Sweet Breathing

Spring!

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Ah Spring!

Your vibration has been simmering, now ready to burst forth!  I feel this awakening in every cell, the sweetness on my skin, a soft embrace, an invitation.

The inner world of winter making way for the outer connections of Spring into Summer. So many Gifts! I am present.

“Only with winter-patience can we bring the deep-desired, long-awaited spring”

-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“The life of the earth comes up with a rush in springtime.”

-Laura Ingalls Wilder

“To me a lush carpet of pine needles on spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.”

-Helen Keller

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

-Lao Tsu

Animals, Glacier National Park, Home, Photo Gallery, Sweet Breathing

Scenes from Winter – A Gallery of Photos

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“No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place”

-Zen Koan

Fence-Snow-Blues-Sunset-680x1024

“Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness.”

-Mary Oliver

“Let us love winter

for it is the

Spring of genius”

–Pietro Aretino

 


Click onto any image to see a full sized version, then use the arrows to continue with full size slide show:

Sweet Breathing

My Your Heart Soar

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“The beauty of the trees,
the softness of the air,
the fragrance of the grass,
speaks to me.

The summit of the mountain,
the thunder of the sky,
the rhythm of the sea,
speaks to me.

The faintness of the stars,
the freshness of the morning,
the dew drop on the flower,
speaks to me.

The strength of fire,
the taste of salmon,
the trail of the sun,
And the life that never goes away,
They speak to me.
And my heart soars”

-Chief Dan George

All of these moments that Chief George eloquently lists make my heart soar too! And my unbounded soaring heart is activated by all that surrounds me here – at home. Simple and sweet gifts of nature and love, and the “beauty of the trees and the softness of the air” touch me to my molecules.

May you feel your heart soar as precious moments compel your complete attention and are indelibly etched on mind and memory…

Sweet Breathing

Deepening

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The last day of February – already.  Our winter in northwest Montana came late… beautifully, powerfully and incessantly.  Deep cold and deep snow. Satisfying.  Waking to heavy snow showers this morning, knowing we’re transitioning soon, I’m absorbing it all.

I need this deep winter.

“I love the deep silence of the midwinter woods. It is a stillness you can rest your whole weight against… This stillness is so profound you are sure it will hold and last.”

-Florence Page Jaques

“So burrow in. Snuggle deep. A winter idyll of simple splendor awaits.”

-Sarah Ban Brea

 

 

Sweet Breathing

Good Morning

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“Hello, sun in my face.

Hello, you who make the morning

and spread it over the fields

and into the faces of the tulips

and the nodding morning glories,

and into the windows of , even, the

miserable and the crotchety —

 

best preacher that ever was,

dear star, that just happens

to be where you are in the universe

to keep us from ever-darkness,

to ease us with warm touching,

to hold us in the great hands of light —

good morning, good morning, good morning

 

Watch, now, how I start the day

in happiness, in kindness.”

-Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early

There is  a note at the end of this volume, Why I Wake Early, that says: “On the eve of the publication of her third volume of poems, Twelve Moons, Archibald MacLeish wrote to Mary Oliver: “You have indeed entered the kingdom. You have done something better than create your own world: you have discovered the world we all live in and do not see and cannot feel.”  Mary Oliver must have always been compelled to wake early to take it all in, to discover, and then discover anew, in each moment, our magnificent and glorious world…  Her words LIVE and help us to live each moment, even in her absence.