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Showing posts from June, 2014

summer

What does summer look like at our house? Well apart from devoting at least three hours daily to homework, here is a sampling:  Bodhi's latest book is back from our desktop publishing company and Bodhi treated us to a special reading and book signing today once the mailman deposited the package into our eager hands.  For supper, Bodhi suggested this AWESOME salad …the boys favorite vegetable is kale!  Now that is lucky for me since it happens to be a food staple of mine.  Afterwards we initiated our newly built fire pit (yes the braggart in me needs to remind you that I built it myself!)...  And Bodhi roasted marshmallows in the back yard...  before consuming delicious, oozing, chocolaty s'mores. To work off some of his energy before bed he played with his new spooner in the back yard.  We then took a pleasant neighborhood walk and now he snores loudly in his bedroom.  Ah motherhood is the best gift I could recieve particularly when I set aside the busyness o

seven and a half

 One of the perks to having a birthday on December 26th is that you get to have a half birthday celebration with mom. This year consisted of an italian supper with a buddy and a specially made gluten free chocolate cake complete with half a birthday song.  He loves the celbration!!!

life

Life. I don't pretend to understand it. I no longer even delude myself with seeking strategies aimed toward that end. In fact, it seems now, that all such strategies were subtle plans to outsmart pain, to outwit suffering, to out maneuver life. A friend recently told me, "Many people say they love the rain but when they go outside in it they take an umbrella".  To experience the rain (life) we can't truly experience it without an embrace of its essential wetness.   If we are going to love it, we will have to get wet. Stand naked in life and allow life to drench us and live us, to dry us and warm us, then and only then do we lay down our arbitrary separation from life's wholeness and truly LIVE. I am learning, one droplet at a time. One breath at a time.  One moment at a time.

owen's advice

My incredibly beautiful eldest son just called me full of summer joy and enthusiasm, like a fresh breeze blown across farmland whispering of fireflies and life.  He called to tell me how wonderful his summer is and how excited he is to begin his research for next year in ninth grade.  He called to tell me that he got a heaping stack of new books and how happy that makes him.  He called to tell me that I am beautiful and wonderful.  He called to tell me that something "had been gnawing" on him for a while now and he just needed me to hear it.  He asked me not to give up on letting people in close and to bravely open my heart and life to love and belonging, to connection and community.  He said, "Mom while it is true that a lot of people in life might hurt you, just open your heart anyway, because in the end it always works out. And there is a right match out there for you.  Someone who can appreciate and treasure you like I do but different and more".  He aske

bodhi hike

My sweet summer boy wanted to go hiking this morning.  So we were up by 5:30 and on the trail by 6:15.  What a special gift to have a hiking buddy at that hour...  to share in the wonder and majesty of life, without all the unnecessary human complexity for a few hours.  Ahhh, nature.

beauty in the details

Even when my heart is breaking and my mind is spilling thought like an overfull cup, my soul stands in wonder in the wake of so much beauty.  Everywhere.  Wherever I go.  On the side of the road, growing up through cracks in the pavement, there is LIFE.  And its gentle beauty coaxes the most sublime sensibilities to the surface. And reminds me that the life in which I am so obviously immersed is also the life which blooms and breathes as you and me. When in our darkest hours we can pause and allow life to touch us with awe, we will stand in wonder before the splendor in the details of living so often overlooked, but always present.

backyard beauty

Sanctuary . It comes in many forms. Occasionally it is found in the arms of a beloved or the sound of a child's joy, or the stillness of listening and a gentle release of breath.  Often it comes to me in nature, wherever I find her and lately I have been resting and working in the embrace of my own backyard sanctuary .

welcome the birds

My backyard is a cacophony of birdsong.  There are birds everywhere, in every tree: robins and black birds, pigeons and wood peckers, small and large song birds of every description.  In the daylight hours a symphony of winged conversations takes place over my head.  They land on my window ledge and look in at me while I eat my morning meal.  They are brazen and beautiful and welcome!

sorrow

There are few greater sorrows as a mother than to realize how your own bumbling humanness has caused your child pain.  And yet in our inevitable imperfection…it happens.  And the best we can do, is to go on loving as consciously and mindfully as we can.