Show me a day when the world wasn't new

Photo from here.

It's another warm and beautiful spring morning. Obviously I'll be inside earning a living for most of the day. But at least for the moment I'm reflecting on the stillness of this morning- the way the sky subtly shifts from black to grey to blue in the early hours of the day (can you guess who was up early to empty her bladder today?)

I've always loved the quote by a very astute woman named Sister Barbara Hance: "show me a day when the world wasn't new". It doesn't often feel easy to approach our mundane days with a sense of hope or wonder, but there are so many reasons to celebrate the rythyms of life inherent in the daily cycles of nature and even in our own schedules. I wish each of you a moment of that awareness and awe today.

Photo from here.

Morning Poem

Mary Oliver

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

or 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 it 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.