Winter: a time for reflection

It's been a week of good news -- bad news. The good news is the tractor, the one the wouldn't turn over earlier this week, started today. I cancelled the order for a battery charger. The bad news is, with 6" to 10" of snow in the forecast, the brand new Husqvarna ST224 P snow blower is in the shop because all the cables on the right hand side ceased functioning. No auger! I'm hoping the good news is the local hardware store where I bought it gets everything working and calls me before much of the forecast is on the ground.

soon, the view through the picture window may look like this

Photo by J. Harrington

In order to get the snow blower back to the dealer, I had to get my trailer from the Son-In-Laws. He and the Daughter Person had borrowed it some time ago and, with a new snow blower and functioning tractor, I hadn't seen a reason to ask for it back, until today.

Several months ago I restarted a program of doing morning meditations, including reading the Tao Te Ching and a number of spiritually oriented poems and essays. I don't want to think about what I'd be like today if I hadn't been trying to calm down and chill out. It has to do, I read, with whether I want to be a person who reacts to everything, or someone who acts appropriately under almost all circumstances. I've concluded that for too long, I've been focused too much on what's wrong in the world and not enough on what I can do to share kindness and consideration with those around me.

With luck, persistence, and a modicum of being on the receiving end of kindness and consideration from others, I may make it through this storm and the rest of Winter. The Better Half was kind enough to bring up the recycling and trash barrels while I was out retrieving a trailer. I didn't even have to ask. I 'm learning to appreciate small moments of moments of joy and pleasure created by things going better than expected. May each of you find what you need in life. It's a journey that is full of rough spots and pot holes.

Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye - 1952-

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.