This morning I notice that I feel differently than yesterday morning.  Impermanence is beginning to land in me, to float, in this moment anyway.  The tides move in and out four times a day – high, low, high low – each day different, each moment, and so this morning I look out on sunshine and feel reflectivity guiding me.   I allow myself to feel the moon moving toward Thursday fullness, the sturgeon moon, a Supermoon, the last Supermoon of this year.

Thoreau:

The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

If you’re looking for inspiration read The Hummingbird’s Gift by Sy Montgomery. 

“Hummingbirds are less flesh than fairies. They are little more than bubbles fringed with iridescent feathers – air wrapped in light.”

Hummingbird nests are woven with spider silk so the nest stretches to fit the tiny creatures as they grow.

“These little bubbles of spunk inspire extraordinary tenderness. One autumn, a ruby-throat, on its lonely, five-hundred-mile migration – a journey across the Gulf of Mexico, which can demand twenty-one hours of non-stop flight – landed, spent, on a drilling platform on the Mississippi coast. It was too exhausted to continue. The oil company dispatched a helicopter to fly it to shore.  The hummingbird spent the winter in a gardener’s greenhouse, then left fat and healthy, on its spring migration.” 

Watch this video and be inspired.

We have ⅓ of an acre, most of which we keep natural for our fellow creatures.  A part is fenced though to contain and protect a Japanese garden.  Yesterday afternoon we noted movement over the fence, and here is our new friend.

We have four maple trees with red leaves. When grandson was here, he asked how we painted the leaves red. The question made me even more appreciate the variety in nature’s palette.

This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attention.

– Mary Oliver 

When I drive to Pt. Reyes I go up over the mountain, down to Stinson, along the Bolinas Lagoon, and this time of year past hills of gold to Pt. Reyes Station, and then out to Inverness.  The bookstore in Pt. Reyes is pure delight.  I brought three books and a Kindle but just in case, three more enter my life:  Wanderers: A History of Women Walking, In Praise of Walking, and The Unwinding and Other Dreamings.  I branched between four books last night even as I was entranced with and embraced in the landscape, the land of the Coast Miwok, the land where the native people welcomed Drake, not knowing what was to come.

Now, early morning, still dark, I warm by a fire and contemplate what we’re seeing from the James Webb telescope.  Perhaps it’s like when people realized the earth went around the sun.  We’re drawn back into time, time as one with now.  Surely this will expand our vision to this communal living we share.

If you held a grain of sand up to the sky at arm’s length, that tiny speck is the size of Webb’s view in this image. Imagine—galaxies galore within a grain …

—NASA Webb Telescope’s Twitter account

I feel stretched by the photos of our universe, remember as a child standing outside feeling the universes within me, and the universes of which I’m part.

I’m up early to water in the fog, the moon, now partial though more than half, shining through.  The days are shorter now and all branches, including us, to reach and utilize the summer light.  I eat plum offerings from the trees.

Edith Wharton wrote: Set wide the window.  Let me drink the day.

I open all my cells to receive, filter, drink, and feast on and with this beautiful new day.

This is an American holiday, and perhaps appreciated more this year when the independence so fought for is threatened.  We know life is movement and change but I think most of us see it as movement forward not backward.   I see the date, the fourth, as going forth.  

Amidst all that’s happening, I return to the questions the philosopher Spinoza suggested we ask ourselves each night.

What inspired me today?

Where did I experience peace, balance, comfort, or satisfaction?

What made me happy today, what, not who?

May we all travel forth on the Fourth.

Yesterday my neighbor invited some neighbors over for afternoon tea which actually was wine, sparkling water, and goodies, most perfect for “tea”.  We were outside in the garden that her husband, even at the age of 86, maintains beautifully.  

Today I had my dental cleaning and my dental hygienist was in the office alone with country western music playing.  I remembered when I was in radiation and would lie down on the table and listen to the music of the day.  One day it was “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” by Kenny Chesney.  I relaxed so far into the table, they had to stop treatment and readjust me.  

Life is good for me these days.  

Terry Tempest Williams:

The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.