I saw her in the market
backlit in the doorway
from the evening sun,
blue cloak ripples like water
dandelions and primrose in her hand.

Passersby brush past
this moment of light and song
in a rush to get shoes off
and dinner on, just another day
of traffic, bills, and angry bosses.

I stood, mouth open,
holding three lemons,
a pile of sunlight,
a miracle in yellow,
tiny halos

a little girl stops next to me,
giggles, points to the door,
her mother’s yank
drags her back to the world of lists.

I fear I will forget
this supermarket vision late tonight,
reaching for the bowl of lemons
and simply seeing fruit.

~Christine Valters Paintner

how can we feel and then tend to the consequences of opening?

inquiry for today~   may you stop to listen today….without a need to fix anything, but just to feel all the ways your senses draw you in to your aliveness……

passing by the old tombs

You must unlearn the habit of being someone else or nothing at all, of imitating the voices of others and mistaking the faces of others for your own.

One thing is given to man which makes him into a god, which reminds him that he is a god: to know destiny.

When destiny comes to a man from outside, it lays him low, just as an arrow lays a deer low. When destiny comes to a man from within, from his innermost being, it makes him strong, it makes him into a god. A man who has recognized his destiny never tries to change it. The endeavor to change destiny is a childish pursuit that makes men quarrel and kill one another. All sorrow, poison, and death are alien, imposed destiny. But every true act, everything that is good and joyful and fruitful on earth, is lived destiny, destiny that has become self.

~Herman Hesse