Gathering Vanishing Days [David’s blog on KS Friday]

“Many of us have made our world so familiar that we do not see it anymore. An interesting question to ask yourself at night is, What did I really see this day?” ~ John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

This week our world is a big as our sunroom. The Dogga is ill and we are with him constantly. I pet him and he sleeps. While he sleeps I look out the window. Breck the aspen tree quakes. Finches alight in the small branch outside the window. They look in, visitors to the people zoo. I look back and am amused at what they see. The autumn light in the backyard is startling.

I realize that in many ways the world has stopped – or at the very least time has slowed. This is unfamiliar territory. Even the room is novel, rearranged, piled with soft rugs and gated for Dogga containment. It has become a cradle of sorts. All of our life patterns are altered. We are making it up as we go. In this unexplored landscape I can see again. Every breath. Every leaf that drops.

I am not trying to be anywhere else. I am exactly where I want to be, doing the most important thing I can imagine doing. I am not bored or feeling trapped. Quite the opposite. I wonder how often this has been true in my life?

John O’Donohue sits by my side. He tells me, “Your soul is the priestess of memory, selecting, sifting, and ultimately gathering your vanishing days toward presence.”

Dwight recently asked a question, “What is the wake I am leaving as I navigate work, my family, uh.. the airport, etc.?” I rearrange the image within his question: what is the ripple I send from my pebble-center that will all too soon disappear, a disturbance in the water returning to mirror calm?

A haiku: Dogga lifts his head. His tail wags a single wag. My heart knows itself.

WHEN THE FOG LIFTS on the album THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY © 1998 Kerri Sherwood

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read Kerri’s blogpost about THE FOG

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Stand Still And Listen [on Two Artists Tuesday]

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~Beloved by Sam Magill, from his collection of poems, Fully Human

Today my thoughts return again and again to Sam, a secret poet, a bard, a believer in the goodness of humanity. Sam knows that a wound, when properly honored, can lead to something far greater than mere healing.

He would look, as we do, with awe at the ferns. He would giggle at how quickly they change color with the light. He would delight in the frog that magically took up residence in our pond. He loves, as we do, the things of this life that live beyond explanation.

If you asked Sam what we need do as our cities burn, as a pandemic rages, as leadership fails and the face of inequity stands naked and unmasked, he might tell us to do nothing. To stand still and listen. “The hard crusty soil is cracking open,” he might say, “there is new growth struggling to push through.”

 

read Kerri’s blog post about FERNS

 

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