A Wild and Precious Life...a New Year

Today, a friend reminded me of one of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day", which closes with these lines:
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

With what better words and thoughts can we begin a new year? with the reminders of the beauty and wonder of the natural world of which we are a part (though far too often we set ourselves apart from it); reminders of the fragility of life; reminders about the importance of living that life to the fullest.

As I am a person of words, I could write many more of them, confront you with many more thoughts, but I prefer, on this brink of a new year, to permit Nature  to speak for itself, astounding us with the amazing world in which we live and with the incredible gift of life itself. And with these photos, I am wishing you a very Happy New Year, a year of decision and determination as you answer the poet's question:
  What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?















 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In Kenya...

Yes, we're here, after 24 hours of travel time and nearly 40 hours without real sleep. Last night the bed at the Wildebeest was so welcoming and I slept until 9a.m. for the first time in years. No apparent jet lag...and a slow,pleasant day today, doing a few errands, catching up on email, reading, and talking with people here. For those of you in Carolina who continually complain about our roads being under continual construction (and I am one of you), after riding down a main road near here and watching our driver doing potholes and serving into the non-existent shoulder the road countless times, I pledged never to complain about our roads again. The people here would think they were in heaven driving I-85...while we Carolinians mutter under our breaths and curse the NCDOT. All a matter of perspective, I guess, but we Americans have so much for which to be thankful- and too often aren't!  Tomorrow we head to Rwanda to visit with friends and meet our newest grandmothers the
Read more

Adventures in Health and Well-Being, Linda-Style...

I am not good at being sick…or perhaps I should more accurately say, at admitting weakness in my body. There has always been a kind of shame (as bizarre as that sounds) connected with lack of wellness for me, a sense that I am not living up to what is expected of me. Perhaps it comes from my German background and upbringing, this inability, unwillingness to acknowledge frailty of any kind, but I am gradually, ever-so-gradually coming to acknowledge that this is a very dangerous and self-defeating kind of hubris. Gritting one’s teeth and soldiering on through whatever it is may be fine on a battlefield (though even there it has its limitations, I’m sure), but in everyday life, this philosophy can be not only a failure to acknowledge one’s own limitations but may also be detrimental to one’s health and well-being. All of this being a lengthy preamble to what has been going on with me lately. For the past couple of weeks, I have been noticing that I tire much more ea
Read more

Finally Friday

Well, dear ones, the sun is shining brightly here in Carolina, after several days of rain, and though the morning air is chill, the promise of warmth is in the sun's early rays coming though my window. Of course, those lovely rays are also alive with the dust motes floating in my room, reminding me that today needs to be a "cleaning day". Get out the dust cloth...get out the vacuum cleaner...mop under the bed... shake out the bathroom rugs...run a couple of loads of laundry...and then perhaps buy some lovely tulips for a vase in the living room to bring the outdoors inside and lift my spirits. The dredges of the flu remain like sludge at the bottom of my cup, and though each day i feel more and more myself, energy is slow in returning fully and i find myself trying to cope with a self that seems not fully me. My morning readings remind me that this, too, shall pass...and that my task is to be with what is happening rather than to rail against it- which is an exercise
Read more