Tried to stage today's penny to show the beautiful snow on the hills and the random flakes drifting about.
Found these good words from this morning's reading from a Julie Cameron book--underscores the focus of this particular blogsite:
"Flora and fauna reports, I used to call the long winding letters from my grandmother. 'The forsythia is starting and this morning I saw my first robin....the roses are holding even in this heat....the sumac has turned and that little maple down by the mailbox'....
My grandmother was gone before I learned the lesson her letters were teaching: survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention.
The reward for attention is always healing. It may begin as the healing of a particular pain--the lost lover, the sickly child, the shattered dream. But what is healed, finally, is the pain that underlies all pain: the pain that we are all, as Rilke phrases it, 'unutterably alone': More than anything else, attention is an act of connection.
Interesting.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the flora/fauna report is more about the fact that the natural world goes on. Considering that the lilies neither toil nor spin, but their heavenly Father feeds them is actually quite comforting to some.
And of course the fact that if it never rained, nothing would grow also comes to mind - the fact that any plant has survived the wild winter we've had thus far is vastly comforting.
There's also something very steadying about the mundane and daily tasks; and in noting the cycles of the seasons.
ReplyDeleteAnd may I just say that it's finally snowing and I'm thrilled???!!!