Happiness

Happiness is a few pounds heavier.
It’s accepting being tired.
Being older. Being softer.
Being more reaching oak and less wildflower.

Happiness is taking days to bask in silence.
Not doing. Just being.
Happiness is no longer shrinking.
It’s releasing.
   Guilt. Regret.
The weight of the past, and the fear of the future.
It’s discovering joy in the simplicity.
The beauty in the little things.
The power in the everyday.

L. E. Bowman

[Photo of camping in Tennessee].

Duality

 

And in this life

we will constantly be

pulled between

love and loss,

grief and gratitude

pain and purpose.

But how brave it is

to allow yourself space

for the tension.

To know that

seemingly opposite things

can all be true at once

and to hold them all

in your hand at once,

in your heart at once.

—Liz Newman

All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter

 

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

—J.R.R. Tolkien

Primary Wonder

 

Days pass when I forget the mystery.

Problems insoluble and problems offering

their own ignored solutions

jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber

along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing

their colored clothes; cap and bells.

                                And then

once more the quiet mystery

is present to me, the throng's clamor

recedes:  the mystery

that there is anything, anything at all,

let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,

rather than void:  and that, O Lord,

Creator, Hallowed One, you still,

hour by hour sustain it.

—Denise Levertov

[Photo of sunset over the Sequatchie Valley in Tennessee].

New Every Morning

 

Every day is a fresh beginning;

    Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain,

And, spite of old sorrow and older sinning,

    And puzzles forecasted and possible pain,

    Take heart with the day, and begin again.

—Susan Coolidge (excerpt)

[Photo of early morning lights through the fog in the Sequatchie Valley].

Self-Portrait

 

I wish I was twenty and in love with life
and still full of beans.

Onward, old legs!
There are the long, pale dunes; on the other side
the roses are blooming and finding their labor
no adversity to the spirit.

Upward, old legs! There are the roses, and there is the sea
shining like a song, like a body
I want to touch

though I’m not twenty
and won’t be again but ah! seventy. And still
in love with life. And still
full of beans.

—Mary Oliver 

Allowed To Be Ordinary

When I stop comparing and allow myself

to be ordinary—folding tea towels

and T-shirts into neat squares, rinsing out

the sticky jar that once held honey—I taste

a piece of eternity. Giving myself to the task

at hand, the chore becomes a privilege:

I get to scrub last night’s pasta pot, I get to

sweep pebbles and pine needles from the mudroom.

This is how we enter the timeless motion of those

who came before us—by accepting the assignment,

which is to beautify and repair our own small

corner of the world. Afterward, I am stained

like the inside of a favorite coffee mug

with evidence of my delight in these daily rituals

that can never be washed away, the ordinary

being at least one gateway to the holy.

—James Crews