Visiting Your New Home

 

Visiting Your New Home

In your new home, I wake each morning to the murmur of leaves.  Dappled shade and rippled sunlight play, gifts from trees that stretch upward over 200 feet.  Black Locust, Black Oak, Cherry and Chestnut, these trees are centuries old.  I lie in bed and feel the cool morning breeze, hear the whisper of fresh leaves on ancient trees and I breathe in, breathe in summer.  I wake canopied and cradled in a tree house.

The songs of trees chorus throughout the day.  Steel-framed windows hug the light, invite the light into every corner, and shine the light onto every pale wall inside.  Outside each window, there are sturdy trunks clothed in every possible shade of green. Inside this home, the outside is made welcome.

Inside of me, the outside is welcome, too.  The quiet, verdant world fills me.  I see green, breathe green; I feel green expand inside me.

Green enters my ears as birdsong and bright breeze gossiping in the leaves.  Green enters my eyes when sunlight calls on the shadows to dance.  Green enters my heart, peels it wide open to trade anxiety for attention and awe, to trade responsibility for joy in the present moment, to trade cares for being astonished and carefree.  Green enters my lungs, as I inhale wind and rain, sunlight and rainbow, fog and dew.  I breathe anew, easy and deep.

Green cradles me and comforts me in this new home.  Green draws me to a place where boundaries don’t exist, where doorways out and doorways in are translucent pathways, where every living thing is part of the same breathing and growing earth.

The leaves whisper, “Peace, peace, peace,” morning and night.  Under this canopy of trees, all’s well with the world and I am fresh and whole.

So, I offer my blessings on your home and to you, who live under this great green canopy of ancient trees.

And remind you:

All shall be well,

and all shall be well,

and all manner of things shall be well. *

* Quote from Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) English Christian Mystic

All photos are mine.

To learn more about this wonderful property, click here and go to Super Granny, a blog site written by Sally Wendkos Olds.

Robins Sing of Spring

Robins are singing of spring. 

They sit in our staghorn sumacs and eat the scarlet fruit cones.   These cones are eaten from the top down and look like half-nibbled cobs of corn.  Enough fruit cones remain to see them through until spring arrives.

Robins flit through our yard, sit in the maples, warm themselves on top of the pergola and sing.  Robins are singing.

Robins are singing of spring and I feel happy.

All photos are mine.

Be Contented With What You Possess

Be Contented With What You Possess

Be contented with what you possess in

life: be thankful for what does not

belong to you, for it is so much care the

less; but try to obtain what you need in

life, and make the best of

every moment of your life.

~Hazrat Inayat Khan

Gayan

This quote seems apt as I reflect upon my mother’s move to her new apartment, in a few days.  She has always been able to shed what she doesn’t need to carry with her, is extremely optimistic about the future and able to enjoy what is happening right now, in the present moment.

Today as I was packing her kitchen into cartons, I heard her talking to neighbours outside.  She had taken a break from packing and was sitting on her deck, feet up with a glass of wine.  A neighbour had come by to hug her and to say his “Good-bye.”  I heard her laughing, happily telling him about her move.

I thought to myself, “Now she’s a good sport, focusing on the positive…when inside her place, there lurks a huge mess of boxes and a huge mess more to pack.”

I heard her giggling and telling her neighbours about what she was doing to move; more folks had come by to wish her well.  Her great-granddaughter was also there, blowing bubbles, with a wand (small circle on a stick) and soapy liquid from a little bottle.  The conversations circled like the bubbles, iridescent round and free-floating, silvered with laughter.

Mum has been shedding belongings for weeks in preparation for her move to a smaller home.  She knows it is very freeing to take only what she needs on any journey; the less, the better.

She has always been wise enough to know how to be thankful “for what does not belong to you, for it is so much care the less.”

For information on Hazrat Inayat Khan, click on this link.