I have been dreaming of written words. A few nights ago I dreamed that I was in college and had to take a writing class from the recent former president of the U.S. Before the class began, he told the students that we would need to plan the total number of letters we would need for the year and we would need to actually purchase them. I thought that was both a ridiculous task, and an impossible one. On a small piece of paper taken from the notebook that I keep in my purse, I simply wrote out a c major scale. 

Last night I dreamed of several blocks of text that I needed to move around on the electronic page. The print was so small I could not read the words which made the task really impossible. If you can't read the text, how do you know where a block should be moved? I do wonder what words were there.  Perhaps they will be revealed later.   

   

This morning I received the following post. Ahh... words I can read and enjoy.  Let's all be kind to ourselves today. Surely that kindness will spill over in all sorts of lovely ways.  

   

If we're not careful, we can spend whole chunks of our lives wishing to be elsewhere, instead of letting gratitude guide us back to where we are now, to all that's worthy of love right here. I have always been a victim of the kind of thinking that I call "grass is greener mentality." Instead of sinking deeply into the present moment of where I find myself and embracing all the beauty and inevitable flaws, I focus on some other, better time to come in the future. The result, of course, is that I miss out on the abundance that's almost always available to me here and now...

Who's to say we can't find solid ground wherever we are, even if we sense that this place is not permanent? Why not absorb what we can and grow where we are, letting ourselves be fed by a life that might at times feel less than ideal? 

~ James Crews, Kindness Will Save the World, as posted in First Sip 

image: San Leandro, June 2023 

Just in Time

I do struggle with self-care some. It is not that I do not practice meditation or yoga or walking. Sometimes I forget to do things just because I enjoy them. However, yesterday Tyler and I drove to Inverness to have dinner with friends. I shall remember for quite awhile that bowl of blueberry ice cream topped with a tiny flower. A beautiful outing and a wonderfully peaceful drive home.  On Saturday, we took Jack on a short walk in the East Bay Hills.  I shall try to keep these practices of going out just because. 

   

"Some days it feels like a foreign language
I'm asked to practice, with new words
for happiness, work, and love. I'm still learning
how to say: a cup of tea for no reason,
what to call the extra honey I drizzle in,
how to label the relentless urge to do more
and more as useless. And how to translate
the heart's pounding message when it comes:
enough, enough. This morning, I search for words
to capture the glimmering sun as it lifts
above the mountains, clouds already closing in
as fat droplets of rain darken the deck.
I'm learning to call this stillness self-care too,
just standing here, as goldfinches scatter up
from around the feeder like broken pieces
of bright yellow stained-glass, reassembling
in the sheltering arms of a maple."

~ James Crews

This poem came to me through First Sip. This information was included: 

"This poem can be found in the lovely new poetry anthology The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, edited by James Crews."   

image:  I love James Crews' description of goldfinches. I have no photographs of goldfinches, but this morning's light on the nashtursims was ephemeral and quite beautiful.  I call it May Light.