Sunday, September 25, 2016

A Glimpse of Sunday

A photo I wrote while out on a wander this morning. It was so beautiful...

11:10 AM

Inside the church. Only twenty minutes have passed since entering Antica. Seems like longer ago than that, but then again, I was famished and wolfed the pan dulce and cappuccino. Perhaps after lunch I will walk across our bridge and wander a bit over there. Maybe find a place to sit and just take in the context. That is one reason I am here so early and why I like my time in coffee shops. They are places where one can "sit in the midst" and yet be unobtrusive. I love that opportunity--to simply step my senses in context. The clackity-clunk of the plates and saucers, cups and mugs at Antica. The press of the too small wicker chair bottom.

The organ is playing with a fantastic, full, sound. The light pouring through the sides...like the warp or weft threads of a loom and the church as well as what rises from it is somehow woven around/woven through these threads of light. They are helping each other hold together this small bit of the universe. The people gathered, they add the pattern, the texture, the dimension that brings life, vitality, purpose, to this weaving. People...LIFE...it is for THIS that the universe IS held together. The call to life in abundance. And if Life in abundance then Love in that measure as well.

 

Saturday, September 3, 2016

Deeper Beauty

I posted in Facebook recently that I went to the Public Gardens one evening in search of…something. I didn’t know what the something was and yet it seemed as though I might find it in the Gardens.

I was restless and achy of spirit. I needed to Go Out, whatever it was I’d find. It was there that I met these characters dancing with the evening’s wind—each one with her own bit of flash and pizzazz.

The joy of chancing upon them, unique manifestations of nature’s whimsy and perfection, divine mathematics, and simple, fresh, beauty, fed the call for today’s adventure.

I would wake up, pack my satchel, and make a whole day of Going Out.

I chose my pens and paper, zipped them into a pouch, selected a book, tossed this into a bag, filled the water bottle, filled up the car, and I was enroute by 7:30.

First stop, the Farmers Market. Coffee, an apple turnover, a table by the water, and the comforting warble of merchants and millers-about exchanging greetings and engaging in the business of locally grown fruits and vegetables and locally baked goods and locally butchered meats. Once I had written a bit and satisfied my need for food and caffeine, I began to wander the stalls myself.

And then I wrote some more.

It is a vision of beauty here this morning. The vegetables are at their stunning peak. The baskets are pure sculptures of nature’s glory. The peppers caught me particularly—their contours and colors—from a deep aubergine through shades of red and yellow and then into green as the other bookend. The leeks and onions, too…just sitting in the sunlight, bare, brilliant and unafraid. The light! The way it wraps, embraces, what it encounters…and at once fills it and lends that sheen of beauty to the outside too. That is what makes me stop. Makes me stop and take the time/care to notice. Finding that… or, this…might have been what I went to the gardens to find yesterday. A deeper beauty.

That’s it. Deeper beauty….the Light that comes through, that encircles and infuses. It is a call and desire of my senses, my being, to spend time steeped in this deeper beauty. To touch back into it as a balm for the ache of spirit. And it thankfully, blissfully, lives in everyday extraordinary places. In the pleats and crevices of field peppers, in the spiralling cones of flower petals that satisfy organic formulas of order. In the dance of light on water, the company of a book in my bag, my heart when remembering friends, the comfort of jeans and a loose long sleeve shirt on a chilly blue sky morning in place called Home.