Posted in Aging, Beginnings, Cats, Change, Death, Earth, Eastern Shore, Exploring, Gifts, Gratitude, Grief, Heartfulness, How to love the world, In these strange times, Life, Maryland, Nature, Photography, Quotes, Spirit, Spiritual practices, Walking & Wandering, Winter

A Monday meander: As the sun rises on another calendar year

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Offerings, remembrances.

In the winter I am writing about there was much darkness. Darkness of nature, darkness of event, darkness of spirit, the sprawling darkness of not knowing. We speak of the light of reason, I would speak here of the darkness of the world and the light of… but I don’t know what to call it, maybe hope, maybe faith, but not a shaped faith, only, say, a gesture or continuum of gestures… Because my work day begins early, it begins in winter in the huge, tense blackness of the world.

— Mary Oliver

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Posted in Change, Earth, Eastern Shore, Gifts, Gratitude, Heartfulness, How to love the world, In these strange times, Maryland, Nature, Photography, Quotes, Sky, Spirit, Water, Winter, Wonder

As the sun sets on this year

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Monday’s sunset, just after we returned from the Bogs.

In alchemy, winter comes first. It is the beginning. The origin. As winter casts its blanket of stillness across the land, we naturally turn inward. The mind and heart settle into Earth’s darkest season. From this place of quiet, a single flame reconnects us to the mystery of our existence and the miracle of the breath. When the Winter card appears, it indicates we’re suspended in Mother Earth’s pause. This is not the time for doing, going or getting. Magic is afoot under the surface. In the glimmering snow and sparkling ice, we see winter’s water in crystalline form, each droplet a prism into the mystic realm. Don’t get caught up in the gloom or isolation of this season. Rather, spin toward the sacred light.

~ Kim Krans, The Wild Unknown Alchemy deck

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Posted in Aging, Air, Autumn, Blogging, Change, Eastern Shore, Exploring, Gifts, Gratitude, Heartfulness, How to love the world, In these strange times, Life, Love, Maryland, Nature, Photography, Portals & Pathways, Quotes, Sky, Spirit, Spiritual practices, Thresholds, Walking & Wandering, Water, Wonder

A Monday meander: Not the last

Posted on by Robin
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A December sunset from the dock.

This is my prayer: May we forgive ourselves and each other when we fall short, and may we all have the courage, faith and resolve to get up again and keep going, to once again ask the deeper questions and dare to touch that vulnerable place inside, to open the heart. May we have the courage to feel the human pain we all share. At the very heart of that pain is a jewel beyond all price. It is the bottomless presence at the heart of everything and the boundless awareness beholding it all, and it is the love that is trying to come forth even in the most broken and unskillful ways. Once we have discovered this jewel, this unconditional love, our work is in opening to it again and again, cultivating a growing faith in it and a faithfulness to it, and forgiving ourselves and others when we fail.

~ Joan Tollifson

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Posted in Air, Autumn, Blogging, Change, Earth, Endings, Exploring, Gifts, Gratitude, Heartfulness, Hiking, How to love the world, In these strange times, Life, Love, Luminous, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Photography, Portals & Pathways, Quotes, Spirit, Thresholds, Walking & Wandering, Water, Wonder, Woods

All good things…

Posted on by Robin
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Somewhere along the way in October.

There are no privileged locations. If you stay put, your place may become a holy center, not because it gives you special access to the divine, but because in your stillness you hear what might be heard anywhere. All there is to see can be seen from anywhere in the universe, if you know how to look.

—Scott Russell Sanders, Staying Put

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Posted in Air, Alchemy, Autumn, Earth, Eastern Shore, Gifts, Gratitude, How to love the world, In these strange times, Listening, Photography, Portals & Pathways, Quotes, Simplicity, Spirit, Spiritual practices, Thresholds, Walking & Wandering, Water, Weather

A Monday meander: My joy is heavy

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Reflections of another time, another place.

To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim.

— Mark Nepo

Let change be a marker of possibility instead of something to be afraid of. Let change be the vehicle for getting closer to your truest self, to the kind of world you want to see, to all that has been asking to be released from your grip. Trust change can be a tool of alchemy, a doorway to more truth, more love, more presence.

— Lisa Olivera

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Posted in Autumn, Blast From the Past, Earth, Gratitude, Heartfulness, Hiking, How to love the world, In these strange times, Spirit, Thresholds, Walking & Wandering, Walktober

A different kind of Walktober

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Pond reflections. (2007)

“The body is mountains and waters. The hardness of the teeth and bones. The softness of the lips and tongue. The living flowing of the blood, that circulates round and round throughout the sky and space.

The body sitting is a mountain. The body in motion is water. The body constantly sits and constantly moves. The earth sits within the body. The sky sits within the mind: the sanity, the wisdom, the truthfulness. The totality of virtue and delight sits within this stillness and movement, that is always murmuring its sound, its song crying out fully into all the distances. The message devoid of graspable content – of love, of belonging, of total inclusion. That is in the mountain’s stone; in the waters splashing; in the heart’s desire; the laughter of the tongue; the eyes’ tears.

~ Norman Fischer, an introduction to Dogen’s Mountain and Waters Sutra

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Posted in Air, Change, Earth, Family, Gifts, Grandparenthood, Gratitude, Heartfulness, How to love the world, In these strange times, Love, Nature, Photography, Portals & Pathways, Quotes, Spirit, Summer, The Bogs, Thresholds, Walking & Wandering, Walktober

A Monday meander: Walktober and a walk around two ponds

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Into the woods for the first time.

Bless the poets, the workers for justice,
the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache,
the visionaries, all makers and carriers of fresh
meaning—We will all make it through,
despite politics and wars, despite failures
and misunderstandings. There is only love.

~ Joy Harjo

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