You know what home is. For many years, you’ve tried to be a modest and eager watcher of the skies, and of the Earth, whose green anthem you love. Home is pigeon strutting like a petitioner in the courtyard in front of your house. Home is the law-abiding hickories out back. Home is the exquisite torment of love and all the lesser mayhems of the heart. But what you long for is to stand back and see it whole. You want to live out that age-old yearning, portrayed in myths and legends of every culture, to step above the Earth and see the whole world fidgeting and blooming below you.    ~Diane Ackerman

the veils are thin this dark time of year……we are draped in color and tinsel and light, but…..we can also touch the mystery of our lives as we settle into night…….

inquiry for today~   what is home and how will you move into the winter solstice?

this time of year

Don’t bother me.

I’ve just

been born.

The butterfly’s loping flight

carries it through the country of the leaves…

for long delicious moments it is perfect

lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk

of some ordinary flower.

The god of dirt

came up to me many times and said

so many wise and delectable things, I lay

on the grass listening

to his dog voice,

crow voice,

frog voice: now,

he said, and now.

and never once mentioned forever,

which has nevertheless always been,

like a sharp iron hoof,

at the center of my mind.

One or two things are all you need

to travel over the blue pond…

some deep

memory of pleasure, some cutting

knowledge of pain.

But to lift the hoof!

For that you need an idea.

For years and years I struggled

just to love my life. And then

the butterfly

rose, weightless, in the wind.

“don’t love your life

too much,” it said,

and vanished into the world.

~Mary Oliver