"Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it."

— Mary Oliver

Being Outside!!!!

Above are pictures from the mother-son campout last night at Marko's elementary school. It was so fun....and I hope you enjoy the words below.
Namaste,
Michele

What I want to say is that the past is the past, and the present is what your life is, and you are capable of choosing what that will be, darling citizen. So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.
-Mary Oliver

This one wild and precious life

Life is a mystery

Above is a picture of us with Santa. We took that picture on vacation last summer. That is where Santa goes in the summer.

Today I have a smile on my face....and am realizing how good life is.
I was thinking about Saturday.
Mark took the kids to the mall on Saturday because our anonymous friends gave the kids gift cards to the mall.
They used them to buy gifts for their siblings and Mark. They were so excited to tell me what they bought each other in private.
Then, when I got home from work, we ate at Applebees because our friends left us Applebees gift certificates!!!

That is one of our favorite places to go as a family and we had not been out to eat since the first weekend in October related to finances.
We seemed to appreciate it all the more.

I hope you like the quote below from a Mary Oliver poem!!!
Namaste,
Michele

Take care you don’t know anything in this world too quickly or easily. Everything is also a mystery,
and has its own secret aura in the moonlight,
its private song.

-Mary Oliver

Letting go

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

-Mary Oliver

precious life

This is a picture of some rocks I painted while camping this weekend.....and a two other pictures from camping. I love being out in nature....I feel renewed.
a friend of mine gave me this poem....below is part of it..
.....one of my favorite gifts to get is a poem.
hope you like it below.
Have a great day!!!
Love,
Michele


Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life? --Mary Oliver

Prayer

Mira took this picture in our back yard last week.

PRAYER

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

Patience

The word for me today is patience.
above is a picture of a bumper sticker that this guy had on his Vanagon at Findley State Park.
I thought it was a beautiful bumper sticker and such a beautiful word.

I have been journaling again. ever since I gave my friend Steve (a nurse that I work with)
my Artist's Way book to borrow, I have been thinking about that book and how it worked in my life.
There were two major ideas that I took from that book on how to open and let my creative juices flow. One is waking up and journaling 3 notebook pages of handwritten entries daily
and taking myself on an artist date once a week...doing something that I have always wanted to do by myself....just little things like walking through a pawn shop or trying a new hiking trail.

so I have started journaling again. somehow it does make me feel more free.
I guess I get all that junk that is floating around my head out of the way and can focus on the really important things in life....things like letting go of trying to control things that I can't control anyway, trusting the universe and just trying to love what is.

I am learning to breath deeper again....to let go more.
I am reminded that there is nothing that I really need to know right now.
There is nothing that I need to really have or own right now.
I am starting to let things flow more and be in the moment.
noticing more and not needing to grasp it...to control it or to even wish that is could be different.
so today my posting is part of a poem by Mary Oliver:

Sometimes
4.

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

------------------------ from Red Bird by Mary Oliver

to live in this world

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

Mary Oliver

The real reason we are here...

"There are things you do because they feel right and they may make no sense and they may make no money and it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other and to eat each other's cooking and say it was good."

Brian Andreas
American Author and Storyteller
http://www.storypeople.com

-------

"I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

Mary Oliver
American Poet
From her poem: 'The Summer Day'

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Amazement

Below is a poem by Mary Oliver. She is actually from Cleveland, but doesn't like to admit it. I highlighted my favorite parts of the poem in green below.

She reminds me to be as authentic and real as I can which sometimes takes a lot of courage. I don't intend to be just a "visitor" here.....I want to fully engage and connect with others. Happy Ground Hog's Day. -Michele

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.