Soul Mosaic

I have always loved the passage from Matthew 6:26 about the birds of the air:

“Look at the birds in the sky. They don’t plant or harvest or gather food into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. You are more valuable than they are, aren’t you?”

In lieu of my talking today, I am going to share a blog entry link I came across today. The blog is called “Travelin’ with Charlie” and the description is as follows: “An occasional travelogue, philosophical and spiritual journal of a middle-aged widow, recently retired, who is trying out life as a fulltime RVer with her Golden Retriever, Charlie.”

Spiritual journeys of any kind intrigue me, and as I noted in my Bette Davis blog post the other day, the stories of people and their heroic attempts to make their way through life, along with their flaws as well as the poignant, always, always interest and inspire me. Her January 8, 2008 blog entry happened to pop up when I did a Google search for the Bible passage on birds of the air. She did one that day entitled:

“The Birds of the Air, The Lilies of the Field

What struck me was her discussion, which mirrored some of my thoughts, about how in the end, all our worries about food, bills, things etc. are really meaningless and not important, yet ….they ARE important because we need food, a place to live, some preparations for our future and the care of our children….we can’t just abdicate our responsibility to look after ourselves and live life blindly. There has to be some middle path, some kind of balance in the tension of these two extremes. Anyway, she talks about those passages and includes in her discussions, thoughts about the mystics, St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and Thomas Merton, all personal favorites of mine. She explores what it is for each of us to travel through our own “dark night of the soul.” In any event, I thought I would share her blog entry.

Her brief bit about herself on the blog page states that she is a 57-year-old Leo, lives in Portland Oregon, and adds: “Widowed suddenly in October, 2003. Decided being single shouldn’t keep me from the dreams my late husband and I shared of traveling our beautiful country. Check out my other posts on The Oregonian’s web page, http://www.oregonlive.com/travel/ and watch for my articles in the travel section of the Sunday Oregonian every few weeks.”

In any event, I’m going to add her to my Blogroll, and if any out there are interested in following her travels and thoughts, just visit Travelin’ With Charlie.

Enjoy her, and below, I’ve added some of my own “birds of the air” moments from a beach trip a couple years ago. Happy Sunday…and Happy June.

With summer’s heat creeping up on us, something to cool you off:

As promised, some pics of the new goslings. These pictures seemed to work fine in Photoshop. I’m thinking the problem pictures of the New England seascape might just be those files. In any event, I’m almost done with that seascape and will be taking final shots afterward. So I’ll give those another try at that point. Maybe the Photoshop demon will be gone.

As to goslings, they are a joy. When life seems too stressful or hectic, just watching their simple appreciation of cracked corn in my ground level feeder, is a reminder of what’s really important in life. The 5 of them will sometimes even crawl into the feeder and fall asleep on the pile of corn. Not a bad life!

Stomachs full, it’s time to head for the pond.

In fact, Mom’s already halfway there and Dad is moving fast, so they need to run.

I’m not the only one who’s noticed the babies. The two hawks spend a lot of time circling overhead, something Dad here is very aware of as he shepherds the babies to the water.

“Ultimately, the story is always about love.”

E.B. White

In my May 8th post I wrote about synchronicity and God sending messages through books. I found out I wasn’t alone in that feeling when someone responded with a comment noting that they too often read things and feel messages are being sent through those written words.

On occasion, I’ve felt the same thing from a song lyric, a movie line, a billboard…even a fortune cookie saying. I guess God uses what’s most available, and in the end, it’s not the vehicle of delivery but the message that matters, that sense of quiet nudging, quiet asking.

Now, I can deal with book entries or songs or movies or fortune cookies. Some other, maybe even wiser person wrote the words, or some unseen force of the Universe delivered them into my hands at that precise moment. What I find particularly unnerving though, are those moments when absorbed in doing something else, usually something so deep and meaningful like …cleaning bathrooms or raking the yard, words just “jump in my head.”

I was working one day cleaning the house and mostly not thinking about anything at all, when suddenly the words flashed through my brain:

“You create your own world, through me, because we are one.”

I won’t even comment on that one further. The hair on the back of my neck still stands up …and that one came over a year ago.

And then there was the one while I was writing one day, and I was struggling. It felt like 10 tons of weight was on my chest. I didn’t want to write that piece, I wanted to just quit and give up. I stood up to walk away when this line popped in my head:

“Remember the quiet request. Can you turn your back on it?”

I shook my head, shoulders dropped, and I sat back down and started writing again.

Maybe it’s all imagination. I’m not special. My name isn’t Abraham or Moses or Mary. Last I checked, the angel, Gabriel, wasn’t outside my window. But then an entry from my meditation book reminded me that God speaks in the quiet moments. And he always speaks, to all of us. It’s just that in the busy, noisy times, or in our moments of pride we drown Him out. We just need an open heart…and a little quiet time.

So, without fortune cookies, without anyone else’s words or books or songs, I leave you words sent to me, that I suspect were meant for us all, and that I’m probably supposed to pass on. I’ll just get out of their way and share them:

“You create your own world, through Me, because we are one.”

“Remember the quiet request. Can you turn your back on it?”

Well, just a small “happy moment” for the end of a long week:

If the 5 goslings the other morning weren’t enough of a gift, this morning my husband looked out the back window and said “There’s a SECOND geese family and they have babies too!”

I didn’t even realize there was a second pair nesting on the pond. However, obviously they were because today they brought out 4 more goslings. I just love it!

Both families were gathered around my tray feeder in the backyard that I’d filled with cracked corn. Fighting over it yes, but not too hard. For the most part, they sort of nudge each other out of the way. And even the local lone duck that resides at the pond is considered part of their “family” and he’s allowed to join them for dinner.

During the torrential downpour, one of the babies decided to take refuge in the tray feeder, which is shaped like a gazebo and has a roof over it. Smart boy. 🙂

I will get pics soon. Today’s downpour sort of interfered with that. Happy Friday!!

I just couldn’t close out my day on such a negative note as Spiro Agnew. I felt the blog needed a positive influence, even if humble. I give you the “New and Improved” Admiral Byrd.

I’d noticed he was in seclusion in his cave a lot lately. I figured it was simply that with both ladies (Scarlett O’Hara and Melanie Hamilton) being pregnant, he was just lonely…and remodeling his cave with the new tunnel exit.

However, yesterday I looked in the tank to see “bits of Admiral Byrd” strewn about everywhere. A claw here, a couple of legs there, a torso behind the cave. No, he’s not dead…just his molted self ended up torn apart and scattered all over the tank.

He has since retaken his spot on top of his cave and is now claw-waving up a storm. After all, he is newly “re-shelled,” and thus, bigger, better, and ready for action. And Melanie Hamilton is no longer pregnant so, opportunity awaits.

Scarlett O’Hara is pregnant AGAIN. She had been living in the water filter for a week. I’ve come to understand that when Scarlett takes to the water filter, pregnancy soon follows.

One last trip down presidential memory lane in this election year. If anyone is interested in a contrasting approach to reaching the American public, there is a recording of an interview with Spiro Agnew. It is on the same blog that carried the Robert Kennedy interview done by Sir David Frost. Apparently both of these recordings were on old LPs the blog author found in a used record shop in London.

I listened to as much of Spiro Agnew’s sarcasm as I could. I will simply say that while Kennedy’s speeches gave one hope for a way out of the messes of that time, a real vision for the future, listening to Agnew leaves me depressed.

To see the polar opposite of hope, vision, and respect for one’s fellow citizens, especially those who don’t agree with you, I give you Spiro Agnew on Jackthurston.com: The Man Who Put the Vice into Vice President

If ever there was a striking example of today’s gift saying by Marianne Williamson, this one is it. We came here with love. Listening to Agnew, it’s obvious, we learned fear here.

Just a quick gift to all. I just looked out the back window and saw the two geese parents carefully, slowly watchfully, ascending the bank behind our house, with 5 wobbly new goslings stumbling along behind them.

We live on property that backs up to a pond. For the last month, a lone male goose has been standing a lonely vigil, guarding the pond. He sits all day, quiet, watchful. At dusk, and in the early morning, he flies up over the trees behind the pond, drops down, and checks on his mate who has spent the last 12 or 14 hours sitting on a nest.

He escorts her back to the pond and watches over her while she eats and bathes. The two then take off for a short flight to give her exercise, then he escorts her back to the nest. That done, he returns to the bank of the pond near our house and spends those same hours…protecting the territory for her.

Now that they are born, he leads his family up to my platform feeder in the back yard, to introduce his offspring to cracked corn. He will stand guard over them all while they eat. He eats last. He will drive away any other geese, and watches for hawks. When they take the newborns for a swim, the babies will follow in a line, sandwiched between dad and mom.

Perhaps people don’t like geese because they can be messy and there’s so many. But I always have to appreciate and respect the way they treat each other as mates, and how they nurture and look after their offspring. In watching them interact as a family, if I could apply three words of description, they would be:

“present” “serene” unhurried”

I don’t know about anyone else, but as a hurried, often unserene person racing around, I have to wonder which of us has got it right?

Will try to get photos…..