Still

Oh winter, you are here, but my heart still plays in the sun.
His rays have kissed me deeply & now warm my soul as the frost nips at my nose.

Coming Home

Georgia J--my home away from home

I am home. I am humbled and in awe for words cannot describe the past two weeks spent with God, with friends, with the holiness of laughter and the splendor of nature. The time was simple and magnificent--the air, the sea, the sky. Birds, whales, crabs and dolphins--from the immense to the miniscule--the beautiful and the awful. God's magnificent pallet. I chose to breathe it in and soak it up. My heart flushed with desire and amazement. The sun kissing my body and leaving me to feel like a wonderful, endearing child. Whispers of love from the world surrounding me. Moonlight on a dark ocean. Sun bursting forth in new day. Songs and dancing. Hard work and moonlit showers. Kisses of summer warmth and blossoms of spring in the midst of winter. It is a gift for which I am eternally grateful. A life of simplicity. T-shirts and shorts. Clean scrubbed face protected with sunscreen. Simple food tasting like an elaborate banquet. Conversations and laughter. Dancing and dreaming. God feeling near. Each day a prayer answered.

dancing blue crab
blue-beaked, red-footed friend

Gone Sailing

The Drop and the Sea

I went looking for Him
And lost myself;
The drop merged with the Sea --
Who can find it now?

Looking and looking for Him
I lost myself;
The Sea merged with the drop --
Who can find it now?

by Kabir

I am off to explore the Sea and the drop while I join dear friends for a sailing excursion from Mazatlan to Puerto Vallarta. I will be back with new photos, ponderings and possibilities around mid-January. Happy New Year!

photo by bill hughlett

Scorched Earth

“And the Lord will continually guide you. And satisfy your desire in a scorched place. And give strength to your bones; And you will be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water whose waters don’t fail.” Isaiah 58:11

Today I am saying good-bye to 2006—a year that has been difficult, painful and scorched. It has also been a year where the Lord has provided daily strength to my very frame and watered the depths of my soul.

Tomorrow, I fly to Mexico—a land of scorched earth. I covet rest and restoration as I travel from land into the immensity of the sea via sailboat—there to be watered like a garden and have my depleted springs filled. Nature calls to me. God beckons me to meet him in a new place filled with dust of the earth and water of the soul.

"coming back" photo by bill hughlett

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my childrens' lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry, Collected Poems

This poem has been shared with me several times by intuitive friends. It has become one of my very favorites. May the peace of wild things be with each of us as we end one calendar year and begin another.