Remembering today, the 11th September, the United States of America and my much loved and deeply appreciated friends there.
21 years
Author: windinmywheels
Cottage industry
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Mine will be a warm-scented kitchen today as apple stewing marks the advent of autumn. And then more to be harvested tomorrow.
Simple gifts
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Laid low by a tummy bug and intense headache throughout today, the slowing to a painful halt magnified the simple gifts of tentative sips of water, and of perspective.
His Majesty The King
God Save The King
Beloved
Remembering, with heartfelt gratitude and admiration
Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
1926-2022
God Save The King
Lake Land
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Wowser! Exceptionally heavy rain is freshening up my lawn and refilling the lakes. Thunder, lightning and rain drumming loud on my cottage roof maintain my restful and contemplative frame of mind.
Turning
Brown and gold and green
orange and red – the hues of
late summer’s turning
Eycott sunset
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A fabulous evening on Eycott Hill to watch sunset behind Blencathra after supper. And moonrise too.
Kirkstone
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This morning’s rain gave way to a beautiful afternoon and a fabulous drive down to Ambleside and up and over the Kirkstone Pass. Returning home with lungs full of good clean fresh air makes for a happy Sunday afternoon occupation!
Like a plant
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As I thought more about this, it became clear why this deep transformation we seek remains beyond our reach despite our best efforts. We wait for it to come from outside of us. We want others to give it to us. Unfortunately, real self-transformation defies teaching. It makes all teachers ultimately irrelevant. For its nature is to be grown, like a plant. It wants to arise spontaneously. Only then is it real.
Amit Pagedar
Finding Awareness:
The Journey of Self-discovery
What a wide firmament of experiences, images and words live in the depths of us! I’d want to suggest to Amit Pagedar that teachers contribute to our inner lives and are not therefore ‘ultimately irrelevant,’ whilst understanding the thesis that self-development absolutely arises from and is processed within – and deeply appreciating the ‘like a plant’ imagery.
Almost every outward encounter I have invites me to contemplate the rooted plant that is perpetually growing within me – fed and watered by everything I’ve ever known – by ‘both sides now.’ And the silence heard in such watchfulness counters – or balances – external cacophany and generates hope, for me, for humankind, and for the world.
Glory looking day
Sleep
We sleep
And we may dream
While we may
Dream
We dream
For we may wake
One more day
One more day
Glory looking day, glory day
Glory looking day
And in its glory told a simple way
Behold it if you may
Glory looking day
Glory looking dayNeil Diamond
From ‘Lonely Looking Sky’
Can it really be more than forty years since I bought the vinyl album Jonathan Livingston Seagull? Skies like this have reminded me of Neil Diamond ever since!
A cloud of interests
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There wasn’t
time enough for all the wonderful things
I could think of to do
in a single day. Patience
comes to the bones
before it takes root in the heart
as another good idea.
I say this
as I stand in the woods
and study the patterns
of the moon shadows,
or stroll down into the waters
that now, late summer, have also
caught the fever, and hardly move
from one eternity to another.
Mary Oliver
From ‘Patience’
New and Selected Poems
Volume Two
Happy September! I’m having a quiet evening and feeling peaceful and mellow.
I’ve been thinking, too, about my automatically generated ‘tag cloud’ here, and of how it gives a pretty good account of some of my chief interests … inner life, contemplation, Edinburgh, poetry …
Autumn and winter will be warmed by an array of interests and occupations like these.
Alive with opportunities
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Too often, we move through the physical world as if it were a stage set, a mute backdrop for our daily activities. Yet in reality it is alive with opportunities for inspiration, wonder, and joy.
Ingrid Fetell Lee
Joyful: The surprising power of ordinary things to create extraordinary happiness
I’ve been quietly watching clouds set in a blue sky today, and poppies nodding in the breeze, and birds, and bees.
I’ve noticed the scent of the coffee and the granite counter cleaner in my kitchen, and taken time to prepare and trim the beans gifted to me across the garden fence by my neighbour.
I’ve swept the first of fallen autumn leaves, decided I must be patient and allow apples a little longer on the tree, enjoyed a productive hour with Duolingo in the sunshine, read a bit, walked a bit, eaten well, had a nap, and thought a lot about Ingrid Fetell Lee’s proposed opportunities.
I read and watch the News sometimes, of course, but I’m conscious of imbalance in the reporting. Apparently newsrooms, too busy with former presidents and future prime ministers (as though – dubiously – these were the most important ‘news’ in the world), don’t often have time (or perspective) to make decisions about apple trees, or singing, or sweeping up leaves. Never mind. I shall be (and you can be) happily responsible for these.
Cycling
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Everything on earth is engaged in cycling through purposeful seasons. The biosphere is sometimes beyond our comprehension, and at other times simply unnoticed. We have our favoured seasons. Most like mild conditions, neither too hot nor too cold. Bees at work in summer are readily noticed. The ground-level mulching and the breaking down processes (in earth and in us) not so much. Noticed or unnoticed, the cycle continues. I love many different aspects of each of the four seasons. And I realised, walking through the city streets of Edinburgh in the early hours of the morning, that I love this world more generally, too. It is my home. It is our home. I shall try to participate more fully in the cycling. I shall try to be quietly purposeful – and thankful.
A quiet contemplation
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Autumn is certainly in the air today – and I’ve been revisiting the rich greenness of a long and lovely summer. A greenness not entirely defeated even in unusual extremes of heat. Lovely in more ways than I can count. I’m thankful and – meditating – look to the days and weeks and months calling us all onwards …
wind in my wheels 🌱 