Sunday’s Seven 7 April 2024

Another birthday in the books last week, and gratitude for family and friends who honored the day with special moments. 🎂

Granddaughters who are currently enamored with the magician’s code and how one keeps pulling all manner of objects from my ear. The best part is her reaction to my reaction…is there anything more joyful than a child’s laugh? Listen for that in your comings and goings this week. Notice it as the gift it is. 🪄 🎩

Wildflower bouquets. Receiving one and knowing these moments are simply a window of time. Children grow and become busy with so much; when someone offers a wildflower bouquet, I hope you recognize the gift of that. Added bonus: a child who agrees to a picture. That sometimes is fleeting, too. 🌸

Beautiful offering

Funny stories told and shared… 🤭

Daily routines and rituals…and freedom to choose how our days will run in the background of life… 📝

Spring’s gifts of puddles and purple irises this week. 🌧️ 💜

Knowing how to prepare a meal and realizing that, too, is worthy of praise. 🍽️

I hope in this month of April (oh, it’s National Poetry Month…I’ll add one as a bonus 😊 below), you’ll honor the gifts of your life. I hope, like me, you’ll never exhaust the list. The more you notice, the more arrive. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

                                    A Gift

By Czeslaw Milosz

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

—-

And, as all things are connected it seems, this poem reminds me of a young man who read the poetry of Milosz to me in Prague…and how that moment’s memory has always stayed with me.

This is one of the many gifts of poetry. ❤️

✌️

                              

Sunday’s Seven 4 Feb 24

Hello readers, and welcome to February. We get a bonus day this month. I haven’t decided what I’ll do with it yet, have you?

The week was fast and eventful. Grandkids swinging, testing out puddles, throwing rocks and noticing all the minute details of the natural world.

The eldest pumped her arm at the end of our country road as a truck driver passed by, and he rewarded her with air horn honks…and in that moment, I was transported to the same driveway many decades ago, being rewarded the same way. Little lights. Little efforts…

We have rock candy experiments “growing” in jars on my kitchen countertop. Little ones have to wait for a week to see the results. The smallest efforts, once again…

Garden center jonquils made their way to my arms this week…and

my daughter texted me a pic of one of my fave places : the Charles Bridge in Prague. Night scene. Lights on water. In that moment, transported to a past as well as future (hopefully) time. All the ways we get to be connected through space and time and memory and effort and kindnesses…

beauty…

Plastic baby Jesus has come out of storage, and has been coddled, sung to, and wrapped up these past few days. He’s really an outdoor manger piece, but these kids treat him like the real deal…

The geese are back. The birds are feeding this morning and filled with song…

Talismans. Those memory laden items or even attitudes we carry to sustain us during trying times. The week gave me a few trying moments, but was punctuated with high notes—much more good than trying. The sense of self we carry really does matter.

I noticed a lot this week. At a community meeting, a woman leader was summarizing content and asking questions, but at one point referred to herself as “stupid”…and my antenna went on high alert. People of the world, women of the world: we do not refer to ourselves as stupid. We may be learning, we may be relearning, we may be unsure; we are not, however, stupid.

I digress, I see. 😄

A former GED student came by “just to drop in” on his way to a college comp class. Those moments of realization: knowing you helped make a difference for someone…but also knowing no one succeeds alone. ✅

The week also gave me a watercolor workshop and time with old and new friends. And later today, some special young adults have arranged their schedules to keep up a tradition we established years ago. 🔔

Some good words to end (or start, I guess 😉) the week:

“The last of human freedoms – the ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.”~~Viktor E. Frankl 🌟🌟🌟

✌️

Sunday’s Seven 16 July 2023

Returner

Ah, my elusive egret has returned, and what an entrance. I’ll start with her story to top my list today:

I have been looking for this egret, and while I’ve seen some at area parks this spring and summer, no egrets at my place. Really unusual. I felt a surprising sadness about it, honestly. But this morning, as I was writing near a sunporch window, Ada barked and I looked up to see this beauty swooping in and rounding the corner of the house, almost clipping the siding on her way. It was a moment I would not have believed if I hadn’t experienced it…a true Mary Oliver moment, I really do think. 🤩 Majestic moment.

I immediately went outside, but by that time, she was a distant shadow among the trees. An hour later, though, she returned to the place I have been missing her from…and she posed for me for a good while. Little gifts, dear people. I marvel at nature and her offerings. May we never be indifferent to them. ❤️

Other things making the list this week:

an impromptu patio visit with a dear friend (thanks, Dee)

a gift of international stamps from a loved one (thoughtful giver)

a Burger King crown 👑…that’s its own story, but let’s add late night drive thrus to the list and one grownup thinking another might accept it…and did 😅

cast iron skillets and all the stories and sustenance they’ve helped provide…

the four slot toaster it took me far too long to buy…it really is the little things 😄

My adult children. They listen to me, help me in ways they cannot imagine, and they really are the invisible listing here each week. Always present outside/ inside/between the lines. ❤️❤️

The week has been a busy one, and I have noticed myself ranting a bit too much, irritated a bit too often. I tell you this as a form of disclosure. While this blog is about the good things, it’s not always easy. Sometimes we ( I ) have to look harder. But sometimes, a great egret will appear right in front of our eyes, and we will remember: look.

As Mary Oliver told us:

Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Bye for now. I hope something memorable and beautiful greets you this week.

Sunday’s Seven 3/27/22

Hello, dear reader,

I know Sundays are really thought of as the beginning of a new week, but I often think of them as the opposite…closing the door on a few days and getting ready for what is next…a winding down day of sorts.

I hope you’ve found some reasons to celebrate over the past few days. I surely have.

My daughter celebrated a birthday …

My son and I spent a full day together …

Art I created is hanging on a beautiful museum gallery’s wall in Shreveport until May 8 …

There were walks in solitude and in the company of others …

There were wildflowers and children picking flowers and trees bursting into bloom …

There were sweet conversations and affirmations …

There was love.

That’s a lot.

Before I write here again, I’ll be celebrating a birthday. The numbers on the outside get bigger, but inside they really don’t seem to…and I’m grateful.

I wish you the abundance of good I’ve seen this week and the realization that it matters that we acknowledge it.

Be safe. Be well. Be at peace. Pray for peace.

🌟🇺🇦 ✌️

Friday’s Five: 11/19/2021

We are heading toward Thanksgiving, so I’ll post 5 of so many blessings here today:

My daughter’s texts and ways of bringing joy to me, even from thousands of miles away. I am so ready to hug her in real time once again. 🌟

My son’s immediate yes to any request for help. Today, he had precious cargo x 4 with him and plenty to do, but he never complains. 🌟

Those precious cargo—four beautiful, unique grandchildren who fill my life with so much delight. 🌟

Friends who check in, make plans, make life bearable and brighter—🌟

I could name so much for #5 tonight: more family/students/nature/beauty…but let me say: strangers.

This week, I encountered moment after moment of kind exchange, smiles, brief conversation…and even tonight a man saw me wheeling a cart to the corral and said, Let me help you out there, ma’am and a woman in the spice aisle at a local store and I had a whole long laughter filled talk…I’ll likely never see these two again, but they lifted my heart. We all have such power to do that for one another.

And…thank you, dear reader. I’ve not forgotten you.

Thank you for being a faithful audience. Thank you for your quiet presence. Thank you for reading.

Happy Thanksgiving. 🍁🦃🍽

Friday’s 5 on a Saturday : October 2, 2021

I have missed this brief connection spot, dear readers. And, while my voice has been missing from this page for a few weeks, I have not been missing the daily “ordinary” gifts of life, and I hope you haven’t missed them either. ❤️

Yesterday, it was cool enough to take a brief walk between classes, and I walked to a nearby park with this sole intention : to witness.

Immediate rewards:

Egret in reeds, then rising in flight to the other side of the pond. Its graceful silhouette and steady appearance in my life leads me to wonder about all the familiar gifts we sometimes see without seeing. In that moment, I saw. ✌️

Oak leaf larger than the span of my hand greeting me on the concrete path; yes, it is now in the pressing stage under a stack of books on my dining table. 🍂

Several midday fishermen and fisherwomen who had no idea how artistic they looked from afar…their posture, their gear, their peaceful presence that made me wish I had brought a sketchbook along to capture the scene (next time). 🎣

Realizing the desire to capture life in art and words is itself a gift of these days. ✍🏼 🎨

Waking quite early after a busy day and early bedtime to still recall and know that the small moments of a day continue to bring the biggest rewards to my inner life and wellbeing.

There is no doubt we walk through the world carrying many burdens and many busy thoughts. To leave those things behind, even briefly, can give us renewed strength and clearer vision.

I’ll leave you with a couple of images. And yes, the video captures another blessing: room for peace just steps away from a busy world. I hope you have such places to retreat and renew, too. 🌟

Witnessing

Until next time, take good care of yourselves. Make room in your days to witness ever-present gifts when you can.

Friday’s Five: July 2, 2021

Homegrown tomatoes for breakfast…thinking of seeds and dirt and farmers’ hands and how I can see myself eating tomatoes at breakfast in Europe, and how I’m settling for the memory right now as I eat another over the kitchen sink in an east Texas town.

Quotations…one really sticks with me this week, by the philosopher Thich Nhat Nanh:

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are. Tell me where you eat, and I will tell you who you are.

I know who I am when I’m eating a tomato in Europe. I know who I am when I stand over the sink and eat a tomato. But in between those times…well, room for contemplation.

Painting progress…I completed three new works this week. All three came from the conversations I have with others, from my daily writing practice, from other places I cannot quite describe yet. In between places.

Riddles on popsicle sticks… and the children who wave them and notice them and wait in joyful expectation as I read the question and wait as they answer. But the noticing. The attention. The laughter. That right there could be the whole post. But I have one more…

Boxes on planes…how mail we send can get from tiny country post offices to international airports, to cargo holds on jets, to flying almost magically through starry skies…all the seen and unseen carriers of goodness and light that are needed in order from something to get from point A to point B. How that makes me think of lots more than boxes…all of our attempts here…how sometimes we are the point A and sometimes the point B…and sometimes we are the unknown point in between that someone really needs/needed/will need.

Happy Friday, people. Happy Independence Day to USA friends. Keep going. 🌟