Quietly seeking to meet Trust wherever Life leads, I understand service as key to gratitude and balance. Freshwater woodlands evoke the most serenity in me wherever they're found. I've shared space & time on terrain of my Ligurian and Oscan ancestors, feeling their souls guiding me, especially in silent contemplation. Today, after over thirty years of engagement in programs for children, secondary, university and adult learning, the gifts life brings on Long Island's Matinecock-Algonquin earth, I try to give & receive with grace.
6 September 2023
Sharpen your vision after your morning sleep, however short it may have been. Pray and give thanks for another morning, despite the heat, thin air, and failures along the path of this day.
And probably, right before your eyes, a token of good fortune may remind you of the opportunities your breath today can bring. Use today for another kind word, a boost of friendship, an attitude of love, a moment of consolation, or a presence necessary to change someone’s day. L’chaim!
4 September 2023
Sometimes allowing silent actions to prompt observation, thought and experience succeed more than engaging in conversation.
Ripened grape tomatoes on the vine, small but particularly sweet this year made a smooth sauce for lunch on a cauliflower pizza crust. Tiny green zucchini, sliced thin and pan-roasted made the circular design. Finally, fresh mozzarella, leftover from yesterday’s weekly stop at the local Italian deli dotted the decorative, enhanced Margherita with a touch of basil.
All remains quiet as people recede from today’s heat & humidity. The earth and grass are parched in places, despite watering every other day. Many messages rise up for those who seek them, with accompanying thoughts.
Labor Day 2023 recipe: crushed garlic, evoo, blended garden tomatoes however small, drop in a few fresh basil leaves shredded and simmer your pizza sauce – dotting with fresh (leftover) mozzarella, garden baby zucchini slices on cauliflower crust. Bake at 400 for 10-12 minutes.
Incomparable, unprocessed taste gives simplicity, authenticity and work together — to make a pure, healthy point, understood through experience on Labor Day 2023.
1 Sept 2023
These times after an imposed quiet at the beginning of the decade gave many pause for reflection. For others it brought angst, anger, anomy.
Daily, behaviors and actions continue to stupefy and defy protocols of the kindness and consideration many of us understood as necessary to maneuver with some agility in a civil society. Yet, there are forces that lean to the contrary. What does one do?
Just after daybreak, in the silence of filtered morning light, I step outside to listen to the sounds of Nature awakening. The sun stretches through a mass of cloud-cover to smile its warm beams through cool morning air, heralding the beginning of September. Squirrels dart after each other on top of the wooden fence. Mourning doves coo good greetings from their perches on electrical cables. Who listens? A solitary dragonfly waits, watches, without motion.
And despite the end of the season, the struggle of the milkweed pods to reproduce keeps all those who know, watching, waiting, and hoping in protection of another fall.
26 August 2023
While it may seem that the world still maintains its frenetic pace, something since the pandemic feels decidedly different.
Many of us, maybe of a certain age, watch and assess with different eyes, driven by a heart that’s paused, maybe voluntarily, to consider events, circumstances, and reactions in a silence imposed by confusion without many answers or actions. There seem to be few solutions rising to implement with courage, especially depending on what moves the spirit to action.
As children, we tread a careful line of obedience and love, IF those were the models given – more or less imperfectly as families go. Then we become parents, or aunts, uncles, good friends and we assume the responsibilities, passing on the cycles of emotions as we have absorbed them…or not.
As we have grown we have been given a bounty of emotions, situations, lessons. If these charges do not include Truth and Love, the impact can be noticed in how we “freely” think, feel, speak, and act publicly and privately.
And if at the heart of that freedom, there is no moral compass to define and guide us, desperation, decay and confusion replace the lucidity of Love.
22 August 2023
The end of the traditional summer season of plenty begins to occupy spaces of back-to-school and business-as-usual. But, there has been a recent shift in perceptions, energies, and behaviors since the middle of the 2010s decade.
Walking this morning on the grass to the stone path around the house, I picked a few zucchini flowers and some small squash. Thoughts strayed from years of childhood, scholastic life, career choices in the US, overseas, trials, tribulations, triumphs, family, and friends who are still present and those yet to arrive, those who have faded from this life in one way or another. With a start, a flitting house wren hopped on the fence within my reach and tilted her head, as if to draw my attention back to the present where a perfect sunflower smiled to offer the joy of this day to me, to anyone aware enough to appreciate the moment.
While traditions surround us in a very material sort of way, they bring with them the “spirit” of ancestors, symbols of a past to which we all belong. And because space-time has been getting a fashionable update since the images of the Webb Telescope, it may be time to reassess how much each of us truly believes in spirit – that mystery that wakes us from slumber.
It may be difficult to perceive. The struggles that seem to have risen in the constant negativity of the news often compound our angst. Yet the more focus is absorbed by the negative, the less time we have to transform it into anything positive.
Sitting in my car, waiting for the arrival of our 15 yr old Black Lab mix from a vet check up and diagnosis, I noticed the tree next to which I was parked. It didn’t seem to be a young tree, but its leaves were billowy green in some spots, while in others, there were no leaves and even the branches were brittle, dried, and failing. Out of an undiscovered portion of sky, a fossil-gray bird landed on one of the barren branches. It eyed me and hopped into the maze of dying branches and leaves remaining. It may have been a Catbird or Mockingbird, either of which has a distinctive call in Nature.
We all wait…in this struggle. Whether it be to determine if a failing tree will fight neglect and lack of stewardship to live, if a beloved pet has difficulties in her final years, or how we will accept and be present in compassion, comfort, and strength to accompany difficult transformations. While one individual most likely cannot change an inevitable path, the role each of us plays in being present, compassionate, kind, and acting from a place of Love makes us Creation’s “instruments of peace.”
It may be difficult to perceive. The struggles that seem to have risen in the constant negativity of the news often compound our angst. Yet the more focus is absorbed by the negative, the less time we have to transform it into anything positive.
Sitting in my car, waiting for the arrival of our 15 yr old Black Lab mix from a vet check up and diagnosis, I noticed the tree next to which I was parked. It didn’t seem to be a young tree, but its leaves were billowy green in some spots, while in others, there were no leaves and even the branches were brittle, dried, and failing. Out of an undiscovered portion of sky, a fossil-gray bird landed on one of the barren branches. It eyed me and hopped into the maze of dying branches and leaves remaining. It may have been a Catbird or Mockingbird, either of which has a distinctive call in Nature.
We all wait…in this struggle. Whether it be to determine if a failing tree will fight neglect and lack of stewardship to live, if a beloved pet has difficulties in her final years, or how we will accept and be present in compassion, comfort, and strength to accompany difficult transformations. While one individual most likely cannot change an inevitable path, the role each of us plays in being present, compassionate, kind, and acting from a place of Love makes us Creation’s “instruments of peace.”
7/4/2023
The heat and humidity didn’t make the day any better. Although some plants thrive, others struggle–much like the fauna in our world, as well.
During the day, the crack of fireworks popping breaks the stillness, and reminds me of what truly matters and how rabbit-holes engulf the unsuspecting.
As long as there is still light to illuminate, choosing to find and follow that light is an imperative in one’s own well-being. Noise and flash produce those momentary drives intent on derailing whoever follows for the gain of others–merely another shell game. Until…my spray of refreshing water before nightfall on the portulaca blossoms offer me the curiosity and wisdom in this new mantis’ greeting. Be still. Listen to Everything, especially your soul.
25 June 2023
Sifting through scraps of paper I sometimes keep because of clever wording of a thought or saying I’ve read or heard, I found one in particular that had me imagining brothers and sisters bent into curving lines and shadows. “When the world doesn’t listen, be the one who does.”
Thousands, maybe millions exist, slumping in their seats – institutional chairs, trash piles, curbsides or dark corners of hostile rooms. All discarded amid the noise, popularity, celebrity. Many more just without any space to curl into. Others, I’ve passed at random moments with angst during my lifetime on deaf streets in Manhattan and Milan. And today, not having witnessed Mumbai, Mogadishu, or Mosul, would I still have the strength of heart to look, limit my thoughts and just… listen?
26 May 2023
In silence, I listened.
To the wind. To foreign words, in sound and song.
To those strangers who didn’t care.
To friends who still don’t call me correctly by name.
To the aging smiles of a married couple dining on meatball heroes.
To confessions and emotions of the cherished, in pain through their grief.
I traveled anyway, alone to this harbor. Not knowing why.
I prayed in breaths.
I thought of Rumi, wisdom whispered in words.
I turned to one, then another, and another, and…only to find myself – sore and lost.
I limped up hills and through holes, in solitary, as life persevered.
In silence, I surrendered to trust, this time, not knowing what else to do.
And after the uneasy night, life transfigured into a birth of discovery
that only listening and seeking can grant,
mirrored by a melding fusion of words rising with a dawning sun.
