To what are you paying attention?

Yesterday's warmth was delightful, while it lasted. This morning's sunrise was spectacularly golden. Now, midday, we're back to our usual cloudy skies, below freezing temperatures, and, despite our efforts to clear the meltwater and slush, our driveway is a skating rink in serious need of a Zamboni. Nevertheless, we drove across it with the Jeep to get to the dentist and spend a couple of hours in the chair. We'll see about taking some driveway pictures later but it looks disgustingly similar to the way it did back in late December, except fewer leaves and more frozen.

remember when Minnesota Winters weren't like this?

Photo by J. Harrington

In the midst of my morning meditations today, one of the readings included a story, attributed to Redbook, about Helen Keller. Here's a version:

“One July afternoon at our ranch in the Canadian Rockies I rode toward Helen Keller’s cabin.  Along the wagon trail that ran through a lovely wood we had stretched a wire, to guide Helen when she walked there alone, and as I turned down the trail I saw her coming.

I sat motionless while this woman, who was doomed to live forever in a black and silent prison, made her way briskly down the path, her face radiant.  She stepped out of the woods into a sunlit open space directly in front of me and stopped by a clump of wolf willows.  Gathering a handful, she breathed their strange fragrance:  her sightless eyes looked up squarely into the sun, and her lips, so magically trained, pronounced the single word “Beautiful!”  Then, still smiling, she walked past me.

I brushed the tears from my own inadequate eyes.  For to me none of this exquisite highland had seemed beautiful.  I had felt only bitter discouragement over the rejection of a piece of writing.  I had eyes to see all he wonders of woods, sky and mountains, ears to hear the rushing stream and the song of the wind in the treetops.  It took the sightless eyes and sealed ears of this extraordinary woman to show me beauty and bravery.”
–    Frazier Hunt

As we move through the clamorous political season now underway, as the thaw-freeze-thaw-freeze cycle toward Spring in the North Country continues to present ambulatory challenges, as I continue to age and deal with the less pleasant aspects of that, as life goes on, I'll do my best to remember this story and to turn my focus toward what's going right in my life, and the world, and do less fussing and fuming about what's wrong. I only need to be hit over the head a couple of times with a figurative 2" X 4" to begin to pay attention and see the error of my ways. How about you? What's beautiful in your world? Have you noticed lately?

Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver

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.

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