Soul food

This past weekend I took a nature walk ... again, not counting steps, worrying about how far I was going, number of steps or miles ... just noticing, observing, listening. Amazing how nature can be such nourishing soul food. And I found myself watching this one goose .... the word JOY kept coming to mind.

I find myself trying to listen more deeply to what calls to my spirit, my soul ... what makes me feel alive? what nourishes my mind, my body, my spirit, my heart ... what challenges me?

One of my favorites poems is Mary Oliver's The Summer Day ...

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

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?

—Mary Oliver

The last lines of her poem, Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? is a question I reflect on quite frequently.

It seems the more i open my mind and my heart .. the more I can slow down, pause, be still ... the more I am able to notice I am both nothing and everything ... the more I can experience moments of letting go and accepting life, and myself, exactly where I am at .....

We accept the graceful falling

Of mountain cherry blossoms,

But it is much harder for us

To all away from our own

Attachment to the world

Zen.