Little Cat Writes Poetry

She sprawls her bold title across the page

where I would read.

She hides her tale from strangers, shares all

with those who give her time and care.

Her energetic paws

print a chase-scene narrative

on the polished table.

After a nap, she stretches, meanders,

her lyrical lines loop and curve

on the wet tiles of my just-washed floor.

Her tidy steps turn where she arches,

strokes my leg, smiles into my face,

and her question-mark tail asks,

already so sure of the answer.

                             ~Carol Bindel

The Natural World Carries Us

Here comes an Autumn dawn, misty from the fierce storms that went through last night. The gold leaves on the tree tops still hang firmly enough; ruby dogwood, clear, pale yellow undergrowth that hides the tawny deer so very well, gold-pink air, oh, it's all so beautiful, my heart must expand some more to hold it all. Every year I notice new detail and depth. 

My friend who does photography, and the cards that I occasionally send, showed me some recent D. C. photos. One shows the clean, white, rounded and spired capital dome against a clear, deep October sky. Brilliant orange leaves overlap in the foreground on the right, a sturdy green pine stands in the foreground on the left. I couldn't help but see that for all our political machinations―and everything human and social is political―the natural world carries us, first, last and always. 

Change is the only constant, we are all in this together whether we wish to recognize that or not, and for all the abuse we've heaped on her, Mother Earth still provides air, water, food. We are all her dependents.  I find that very, very comforting.

October Hay Field

This day is a template of "October's bright blue weather." As I passed a field of grass mown for hay and smelled that light, summery scent, I smiled and imagined I stepped out of time for a moment. And then I immediately knew the sweet, summer scents are not apart from now, but incorporated. All things really are of one piece.

Choiceless Choices

In the second half of the spiritual life, you are not making choices as much as you are being guided, taught, and led-- which leads to "choicless choices": these are the things you cannot not do because of what you have become; things you do not need to do because they are just not yours to do; and things you absolutely must do because they are your destiny and your deepest desire. Excerpt, Fr. Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation.

Useful or Beautiful

"Do not have anything in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful," wrote William Morris. 

A magnet with that saying printed on it hung on my refrigerator for years as a reminder to me. I put it away to make space for pictures of my granddaughters who are beautiful. That sentence of instruction has stayed with me, though, for it is one of my measuring sticks for what to keep and what not to keep.

Recently I have looked in the mirror and admitted that I was never beautiful even at my zenith and am now becoming less and less so. My usefulness is also declining. And what about this decline into old age in light of the William Morris adage?
_________________
My friend Mike left a comment that seems so important to me that I am reposting it here: 
"Worthy work carries with it the hope of pleasure in rest, the hope of the pleasure in our using what it makes, and the hope of pleasure in our daily creative skill. All other work but this is worthless; it is slaves' work — mere toiling to live, that we may live to toil," too wrote Morris, a favorite author, poet, medievalist, calligrapher, philosopher, carpenter, historian and artist of mine.

Usefulness for Morris is measured by something as simple as cooking a delicious meal. It is the creation of beauty, and the ability to appreciate it.

He also said:

"Wherever Nature works there will be beauty."

(The decline into old age is a wonderful example of Nature working. In many of Morris' fictions and poems, the dying body is a glorified one; it is only one of many seasons in the cycle of life and death).

And,

"Most of us must be content with the tales of the poets and painters about [awe-inspiring] places, and learn to love the narrow spot that surrounds our daily life for what of beauty and sympathy there is in it."

A scrap of life

Poor, dead baby, its cloven hoof not as big as my thumb,

it's polkadot suit torn at the hip, fragile tan bone showing.

It lies in the ditch where feeding goes forward
after death from injury, accidental. Did the driver think 
the little one limped off to be healed 
by nursing, by the kind Mother Earth?

Find Treasure: old rules and old-new desires

The soul question, "What do you most deeply desire?" and its various answers might push old "shoulds" and "ought-to-s" aside. I often recognize, though, that the results of acting in accord to the old "should/ought-to" teachings lead exactly to the present fulfillment of so many of my desires. The old rules and the structure they created as I grew to midlife and now beyond led me to some very good places, to ways of being that I desire, ways of being that underlay all my ways of doing.

I am now questioning which of my shoulds I will appropriately lay down. There is a danger of losing treasure if I am too casual and free in letting go of long practiced patterns. And there is danger of rigidity and the waste of precious resources (time, energy, attention) if I hold too tightly to rules that, on close examination, seem to be opposed to the primary commandment to love, for following that commandment in my life is my primary desire.

Grounded. Centered. Balanced. Whole. These are basic guiding principles I return to again and again as I strive for intentional choices for my day. First, each has a physical reality, and then robust metaphors grow from each. These four ways of measuring guide me to the kind of compassion for myself that, once recognized, I may then also extend to the world. 

Just is. The world, and my small, interconnected place in it. Just is.