#174: On blessings and simple pleasures
Hi there,
It’s December, a month of healing, letting go and forgiving myself, mostly for not being gentle enough with myself. My therapist has been a saviour through the year, and while there’s still miles and miles to go, there are signs of progress compared to the year that was, from the person I used to be. I’ve had more bad days than good, but somehow, when I look back, I’m feeling quite alright. Also, I’m quite eager to start 2022 and making certain shifts in my life that I’ve neglected for far too long.
A lovely post I found on IG that captures the feeling:
I’ve also been collecting words / quotes / life lessons that have moved me in a Google Doc. Here are some gems from the collection that I keep returning to:
“If flowers can grow through blankets of melting snow, there is hope for me too.”
-Tyler Knott Gregson“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”
-Annie Dillard
“You’re imperfect, and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.”
-Brene Brown“You are free to do whatever you want. You need only face the consequences.”
-Sheldon Kopps“A huge amount of freedom comes when you take nothing personally.”
-Don Miguel Ruiz“Don’t say maybe if you want to say no.”
-Paulo Coelho
Poetry Corner
Some poems on life’s blessings, perfect days and the pursuit of happiness:
My Beautiful Day by Marion Schoeberlein
I borrowed a poem from the sky,
and music from a bird,
I stole a chime out of the wind,
and from the rose a word,
I borrowed a song from the hills,
a psalm from the silver rain,
I took the footsteps of angels
out of a cobbled lane,
from each little thing I fashioned
something in my own way,
with God's help I put in my heart
a wonderful, beautiful day!
Grateful by Leonard Cohen
The huge mauve jacaranda tree
down the street on South Tremaine
in full bloom
two stories high
It made me so happy
And then
the first cherries of the season
at the Palisades Farmers Market
Sunday morning
“What a blessing!”
I exclaimed to Anjani
And then the samples on waxed paper
of the banana cream cake
and the coconut cream cake
I am not a lover of pastry
but I recognised the genius of the baker
and touched my hat to her
A slight chill in the air
seemed to polish the sunlight
and confer the status of beauty
to every object I beheld
Faces bosoms fruits pickles green eggs
newborn babies
in clever expensive harnesses
I am so grateful
to my new anti-depressant
For Someone Awakening To The Trauma of His or Her Past by John O'Donohue
For everything under the sun there is a time.
This is the season of your awkward harvesting,
When the pain takes you where you would rather not go,
Through the white curtain of yesterdays to a place
You had forgotten you knew from the inside out;
And a time when that bitter tree was planted
That has grown always invisibly beside you
And whose branches your awakened hands
Now long to disentangle from your heart.
You are coming to see how your looking often darkened
When you should have felt safe enough to fall toward love,
How deep down your eyes were always owned by something
That faced them through a dark fester of thorns
Converting whoever came into a further figure of the wrong;
You could only see what touched you as already torn.
Now the act of seeing begins your work of mourning.
And your memory is ready to show you everything,
Having waited all these years for you to return and know.
Only you know where the casket of pain is interred.
You will have to scrape through all the layers of covering
And according to your readiness, everything will open.
May you be blessed with a wise and compassionate guide
Who can accompany you through the fear and grief
Until your heart has wept its way to your true self.
As your tears fall over that wounded place,
May they wash away your hurt and free your heart.
May your forgiveness still the hunger of the wound
So that for the first time you can walk away from that place,
Reunited with your banished heart, now healed and freed,
And feel the clear, free air bless your new face.”
On a Perfect Day by Jane Gentry
... I eat an artichoke in front
of the Charles Street Laundromat
and watch the clouds bloom
into white flowers out of
the building across the way.
The bright air moves on my face
like the touch of someone who loves me.
Far overhead a dart-shaped plane softens
through membranes of vacancy. A ship,
riding the bright glissade of the Hudson, slips
past the end of the street. Colette's vagabond
says the sun belongs to the lizard
that warms in its light. I own these moments
when my skin like a drumhead stretches on the frame
of my bones, then swells, a bellows filled
with sacred breath seared by this flame,
this happiness.
The Art of Blessing the Day by Marge Piercy
This is the blessing for rain after drought:
Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,
a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.
Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.
Enter my skin, wash me for the little
chrysalis of sleep rocked in your splashing.
In the morning the world is peeled to shining.
This is the blessing for sun after long rain:
Now everything shakes itself free and rises.
The trees are bright as pushcart ices.
Every last lily opens its satin thighs.
The bees dance and roll in pollen
and the cardinal at the top of the pine
sings at full throttle, fountaining.
This is the blessing for a ripe peach:
This is luck made round. Frost can nip
the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,
a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,
the burrowing worm that coils in rot can
blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.
Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.
This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January, those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.
This is the blessing for a political victory:
Although I shall not forget that things
work in increments and epicycles and sometime
leaps that half the time fall back down,
let's not relinquish dancing while the music
fits into our hips and bounces our heels.
We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.
The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,
the blessing for love returned, for friends'
return, for money received unexpected,
the blessing for the rising of the bread,
the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental
about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote
with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.
But the discipline of blessings is to taste
each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet
and the salty, and be glad for what does not
hurt. The art is in compressing attention
to each little and big blossom of the tree
of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,
its savor, its aroma and its use.
Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can't bless it, get ready to make it new.
Recommended Listening
I’ve been exploring online sound baths to unwind. Such a floaty feeling.
Links of the Week:
Convert photographs to lines (very cool)
John Cleese's 5-step plan to have shorter and better meetings - from 1976!
Lone Island, Brett Goldstein’s one-man dating show made during the lockdown
Coming soon: Hilda and the Mountain King Movie
Sign up: The Kaha Mind Soul Santa
Ending this newsletter with this gorgeous artwork by Ukrainian artist Julia Sergueïevna Pavlova:
Wishing you cozy dreams,
Rohini
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