Having It all.

My life experience says to me, Sure, you can have it all, but you can't have it all at once.  How can it be this was not common knowledge available to me to be absorbed from society in general?

Foggy Sunrise, Sunny Day and Memories

The valley is so foggy this morning that I can't see the horse meadows, just glowing, pink-gold-white mounds of fluff. It's cool, still, and the trees are threaded with sunlight. Such lovely patterns form on the east-facing side of the trees, and that's what I get to watch, looking out a west-facing window at sunrise.
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The day cleared and turned into one of the treasures of the world: a perfect, sunny, temperate, lush June day. Last year June 15 was just such a day, too. One year ago today old Mr. Misty walked out into the air, sniffing and listening, slow and careful in his blindness but full of catly dignity, and did not come back. For all my searching, he made no response, and so he did not stay "safe"within my circle of influence, but went with his joy in the natural world. I miss him still, and remember.

Arrogant loneliness. Negative geography. Mortally beautiful. Thus the world.

Mindful. In this crowded, hustling world, how does one be mindful? 
Sunrise, cool air, birds loud in their doings, deer browsing, horses in the meadow, the grasses and wineberry bushes dew-wet, the hum of the refrigerator, the clock ticking the secinds and the click of these keys the only human sounds for a brief moment. 
I spend time simply noticing the world around me, making my attention wide or narrow. Yet, there is so much I miss. The cat doesn't care about that, so long as I gently notice her when she wants noticing, and remember her food.

The Scent of Life Transforming

The air smells like the grass that has been cut and is drying into hay in the field just north and west of us. Timothy, preferred for horses. That sweet, sweet scent of grass giving up it's moisture in the sunshine, the scent of life transforming.

Noticing, and Amen!

"Failing to notice a gift dishonors it, and deflects the love of the giver. That's what's wrong with living a careless life, storing up sorrow, waking up regretful, walking unaware." Kathleen Dean Moore in Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature (19)

"In those warm first day of summer when the world is large and cordial, the chubby caterpillar crawls upon some log or limb or walkway each morning for little reason other than that the courses of the log or limb or walkway are there and that crawling is innately the business of caterpillars. The greening earth provides food at every turn of each day's paths, and the infant butterfly eats at will and by opportunity, innocent of its coming purposes." ( Phyllis Tickle, The Shaping of a Life, Doubleday, 2001, 378.)

My friend's advide

Choose a pithy, important-to-you word, like joy, play, prayer, friend. Pick a word, any word. Then notice where you see it, keep a journal of the quotes, the context in which that word turns up in your life in the course of a month, a season, a year. My friend writes that she and her daughter have each been doing this word journal, one  word per year, with astonishing results. What a fine way to open to possibility.