Grateful

I am grateful.
I am grateful to have a heart that has friends to hold it. I am grateful to be walking the journey of motherhood alongside some truly inspirational women. I am grateful for phone calls with dear friends, I am grateful for cups of coffee handed to me just when I need them. I am grateful for friends who let me nap on their spare beds when I feel exhausted. I am grateful for friends who brave crowds of thousands to share the inspiration of hope with our children. I am grateful for friends who share music making, art creating, scone baking, chaos embracing.......

all of it. I am so grateful.

Golden light, and one of my favorite poems.....

Fall morning light, originally uploaded by annamaren.

Famous

By Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

A magical idea......

A link to a beautiful idea on a beautiful blog.....taking mere moments to capture the essence of a magical moment....

A Journal of Moments in a Jar

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

What to Remember When Waking.

Spruce Knob.... The view from the Mountain Institute down into the valley., originally uploaded by annamaren.

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love? What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

~ David Whyte ~

(The House of Belonging)

Heart in her hands....

Heart in her hands...., originally uploaded by annamaren.

Praying

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

-Mary Oliver

Windowsill above my kitchen sink- The prayerbeads I strung a month ago.

Windowsill above my kitchen sink- The prayerbeads I strung a month ago., originally uploaded by annamaren.

My dishwasher broke a week ago.... and I have been doing dishes every day..... here my prayer beads sit, up and out of the bubbles, while I splash around, lost in thought, getting dirty things clean.

I thought I didn't like to do dishes.....I thought I would have a hard time while my dishwasher was broken. It has been a nice chance to have some quiet time though.... an unexpected bonus.