A cold wind blows across the land.
Bare limbs sway as
ravens circle
high in a grey,
cloud-covered sky. Farther
along the path,
two bright blue birds
sweep past, drawing
the eye to the far horizon
where the sun still
shimmers behind
low hanging clouds.
JDG
What will this shortest day, longest
night of twenty
twelve bring? This date,
a real Mayan
Rorschach test, casts a wide net and
gathers many
projections. Will
it be the end
of our physical world? A shift
in consciousness?
or a day much
like any other?
JDG
Although families are said to be
the fastest and
steepest path to
enlightenment,
I’d prefer to ease into things
in some remote
Himalayan
cave – all alone.
These endless wrangles over chores
and homework make
me yearn for paths
less strenuous.
JDG
Grey days can be comforting when
what we need most
is to settle
in and tend to
what we’ve left undone. Today my
granddaughters and
I hunkered down
and finished some
chores long avoided until now,
leaving us with
a satisfied
and ungrey glow.
JDG
May our words be candles. May we
honor those slain
and comfort those
hurt and lost in
grief. May our words bring light and lead
us through the dark
to a sacred
space where all are
held. May we find a way to stand
together and
speak only that
which brings forth light.
JDG
Stuck behind a slow-moving bus,
I sat and fumed,
my thoughts running
ahead to a
place neither here nor there. How much
time, I wonder,
have I spent caught
in this nowhere
place when I could easily have
settled into
simply being
right here, right now?
JDG
Brevity – a discipline hard
to learn, easy
to forget – is
much ignored when
more is valued rather than less,
when excess is
preferred over
elegance, when
what is spare is seen as sparse and
what is simple
is dismissed as
lacking substance,
as though weight can only be found
through addition.
JDG
A carpenter uses the word
“justify” to
mean a process
by which something
crooked is made straight. Whenever
I feel the need
to justify,
I know it’s time
to pause and take a deeper look.
How am I, too,
trying to make
the crooked straight?
JDG
I was first introduced to this idea in An Anatomy of Peace by the Arbinger Institute, a book well worth reading.
Those words, “Live imperfectly with
great delight,” turned
summersaults and
clowned around while
I somberly consider how
they might apply
to me. Knowing
with certainty
I have the imperfect part sewed
up, I can now
shift to living
with great delight.
JDG
It’s not just a matter of light;
it’s how it’s cast
and what springs forth
from the one on
whom it falls. Just this morning, trees
stood visible,
but grey and cold
until the sun
shone through, bringing forth a glow
and warmth not seen
before. Like light,
love does this too.
JDG
