Category Archives: Gratitude

Found hearts

While hiking at the Mill of Kintail last week, I came across this heart rock on one of the boardwalks.

A few weeks ago, I woke up and looked out my bedroom window to see this collection of hearts on my neighbours’ lawn, in celebration of their 60th wedding anniversary.

Over the years, I’ve encountered heart-shaped rocks in several locations, including during a Habitat for Humanity build in Bolivia. That heart became part of the foundation of the house we built together.

My niece went to an amethyst mine near Thunder Bay and brought me back this sample.

When I come across an unexpected heart, it always makes my smile. I think we all need a little lift these days, am I right?

May my found hearts help to lift yours. What are your favourite hearts?

Say your piece, or peace

Peace by Chocolate advertisement — An advertisement for Peace by Chocolate, a shop that donates 3-5% of all company profits to the **Peace On Earth Society**

My book club met yesterday. We had a discussion that went something like this:

HOST: If you were to write, “Say your (piece)(peace), how you you spell it?

BOOK CLUB MEMBER #1: I would write p-i-e-c-e.

BOOK CLUB MEMBER #2: I would say that it’s p-e-a-c-e, because after you’ve spoken, you feel at peace.

BOOK CLUB MEMBER #3: I think it’s p-i-e-c-e.

BOOK CLUB MEMBER #4 (that would be me) : I think it’s p-i-e-c-e because you are contributing your “piece” to an interaction.

HOST: I always spelled it p-e-a-c-e. It’s saying your peace. Speaking what is in your heart so you can rest easily.

2 out of 5 book club members had a peaceful take on the expression.

And you know what? I like both. After all, the play on words works for the Peace by Chocolate company in Antigonish, NS.

I feel better now that I’ve said my peace. I think I’ll have a peace of chocolate.

Our book club was discussing The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, a book that left some of us feeling less than peaceful. We all loved the title though.

A good time of year to dance: Hafiz

Here is a phrase I’ve heard some lately: “If I don’t laugh, I might cry.”

Laughing is good. Or dancing!

The God Who Only Knows Four Words

by Hafiz, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky in The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master

Every
Child
Has known God.
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don'ts,
Not the God who ever does
Anything weird,
But the God who only knows four words
And keeps repeating them, saying:
"Come dance with Me."
Come
Dance.

What Should We Do About That Moon?

by Hafiz, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky in The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master

A wine bottle fell from a wagon
And broke open in a field.

That night one hundred beetles and all their cousins
Gathered

And did some serious binge drinking.

They even found some seed husks nearby
And began to play them like drums and whirl.
This made God very happy.

Then the "night candle" rose into the sky
And one drunk creature, laying down his instrument,
Said to his friend—for no apparent
Reason,

"What should we do about that moon?"

Seems to Hafiz
Most everyone has laid aside the music

Tackling such profoundly useless
Questions.

Rain on a cottage roof

“How was the weather?” people ask when we return from our cottage. They assume we would wish for nothing but sunshine and warmth.

But wet weather is a wonderful part of vacation life too. Rainy days are perfect for cocooning with a good book, or for settling in for a nap.

There are few sounds more soothing than rain on a cottage roof . . .

Photos are way more dramatic is wet weather too.

Grow with the flow

A few weeks ago in her post Planned Spontaneity, Laurie Buchanan of Tuesdays with Laurie contemplated the different growing patterns of trees and pondered how that compared to how we lead our lives.

Are you a planner, with specific ideas of which you want to go?
Do you live haphazardly, bending every which way?

Like most people, she is a cross between two styles: 70% planned, 30% free spirit.

I am about 50/50, but when I was younger I led a much more planned existence. Spontaneity made me uneasy back then. In fact, friends used to make fun of my wary stick-to-routine life and pushed me to step outside my comfort zone.

And then I became a freelance writer. Talk about unpredictable.

I have developed more comfort with the “unexpected.”

Once I discovered that some of my most amazing life experiences occurred when I said, “Let’s go this way and see what happens,” spontaneity came more easily. When I allowed life to unfold naturally, it always seemed to lead me to an important and life-changing experience.

“Given the unpredictability of this crazy world, it’s good to be able to grow with the flow,” I wrote in Laurie’s comment section, and that feels true to me. Best not to cling to plans in this COVID time, am I right? It has forced even the most wary of us out of any routines we might have been sticking to.

I’m trying to grow with that flow. All of this feels important and life-changing.

Two trees twining together as they grow. — These trees are growing with the flow together.

Hasten slowly

“Hasten slowly and you will soon reach your destination.”
—Milarepa, as found in Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance by Julia Cameron

But, how can we hasten slowly? Isn’t that an oxymoron?

And yet, it seems we do. All the good stuff comes out of hastening slowly.

A university degree: scribbling notes and typing assignments during caffeine-driven all-nighters . . . for four years
A thriving marriage: juggling careers and taking whirlwind vacations, chasing around after toddlers, paying down the mortgage . . . for decades
Children: pacing the floor during sleepless nights, car pooling to hockey games, gritting teeth at parent-teacher interviews, wanting everything to be perfect for them . . . for, well, forever
Published writing: handwriting first drafts, transcribing messy second drafts, editing, reading aloud, pacing, getting up in the middle of the night to change a word . . . for days, weeks, years

When rewards are slow coming, it is easy to get discouraged. Whether it is raising money for a good cause, learning a language, landing a recording contract, establishing the perfect garden, or mastering the “Moonlight Sonata” on piano, we must push on.

And if we stop typing, juggling, paying, pacing, gritting, planting, weeding, watering, playing, practising, reciting, conversing—if we stop hastening—then we never reach the goal.

Whatever your destination, hasten to it, and slowly you will arrive.

Somerton Smith

Meaningful Words