The singing robins in my yard; the city park with trails near rabbits and
herons, a path next to sapsuckers crafting perfectly round pock marks in pond side
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 spring and summer light; these are the ‘daily-nesses’
that help us feel fully alive and vibrant. They are not the exclamation marks
in life. Rather, these beautiful offerings are the foundation of an earth-based
existence, those which give voice to the ordinariness as a human; they are
commas and periods, semicolons and dashes. Without this common ground with all
other beings in our everyday landscape, we become disconnected, cut off,
incomplete. These ordinary aspects of life provide constancy: sustenance. The
other experiences—the green flash at sunrise over a Baja beach, a wild pony’s
mane brushing my mother’s cheek when he put his head inside our rental car
window—are woven in as the exclamation-marked, bold, and highlighted paragraphs
in life.
We need both: the daily-nesses to remind us of our rightful, still, quiet
place in the whole fabric of being; and the marvelous, to make tangible the
divine in a world that so very much needs the peachy-mauve glow on the
snowcapped peaks at sunset.
(Adapted from a post
on July 8, 2011)
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2017 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."