The simple robins in my yard; the city park with trails alongside rabbits' burrows and herons' perching places, a path next to sapsuckers crafting perfectly round pock marks in pondside trees and the osprey atop his towering nest; the dripping coastal forests and perpetual waves on the shore; the simple ritual of a quiet cup of coffee in this overcast island’s summer light; these are the ‘daily-nesses’ that I need in order to feel fully alive and vibrant. They are not the exclamation marks in my life. Rather, these beautiful offerings are the foundation of my existence, that which gives voice to my ordinariness as a human. (They are commas and periods, semicolons and dashes.) Without this common ground with all other beings in my everyday landscape, I am disconnected, cut off, and thus – incomplete. These regular, un-extraordinary pieces of Life in and around me provide constancy like sustenance. The other experiences - the amazing green flash at sunrise over a Baja beach or a wild horse’s mane brushing my cheek when he dares to put his head inside our rental car window - are woven in as the fully exclamation-marked, bold and highlighted paragraphs in my life.
We need both: the daily-ness to remind us of our rightful, still, quiet place in the whole fabric of Being; and The Marvelous to remind us that we offer divine moments to the world that are as fresh and stunning as the peachy mauve glow on the snowcapped peaks at sunset.
All blog photographs taken by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.
