Celebrate Today

Today is National Apple Pie Day, I learned from the morning news, as I also watched Mr. Food’s Howard create Pineapple Honey Salad Dressing (Mmm…it’s so good!).

Why do we need national food celebration days?  Every single day is devoted to a national holiday of some kind, have you noticed that?  Is humanity THAT NEEDY, that we are ISO something better from every single day?

In my own personal walk, trying to ground myself, I stepped into previous writings ISO myself a little bit more.  Turning the inside out!

A dear friend shared a message with me a few years ago.  I recorded it.  I refer to it.  “You have the right to be who you are.  Stop apologizing for being you.  Stop trying to earn what is already yours.  You have earned this incarnation, so live it with integrity and fullness.  The mountain does not apologize, nor does it seek approval.  It simply is what it is.  Be what you are.  Your soul know its way.”  

Delve deep, go inside.  If you don’t meditate, or cannot meditate, pick your own way.  Art, music, writing.  Or go out of doors and stand in the grass to greet the earth and nature.  Breathe deep.  Grow the your flower inside of you, a rose of beauty.

Emerson writes:  The inner world of imagination becomes a sanctuary of hope and promise, a place of retreat for feelings and thoughts, where seeds of individuality and creativity incubate.

Now, isn’t that tastier than that $75 cup of coffee from beans from Panama?  Easier to obtain, but you do have to open the earth of your heart and soul, and bravely explore.

Fanning My Flame

Surrounded by the comforts of my ancestors, words from the philosophies of Emerson and Thoreau, I am reminded of who I am and where my soul thrives. All of the outside world fades, for just this brief moment of time, and I fan the flame called my soul, into a roaring fire that drives me forward into 2019 and shows me that happiness is right here, inside of me.

This Old House, cont’d

Remember this old house? Still working on it.

I cannot say “we,” but he has been working onward with this house. Walls have been stripped to the board, windows removed, flooring taken up. Electrical wiring (mostly) removed. Exterior siding and tin roof removed.

This has been an experience and a long walk down memory lane for this man. Perhaps just short of a spiritual experience as he tears down this childhood home, to prepare for our future.

I’d love to take this into the woods and become Thoreau. Wouldn’t you?

Setting Pace with Nature

A friend pointed out to me an article in The Conservationist, a circular that encompasses New York State wildlife.  An Emerson fan, she thought of me when the author of an article spoke of Emerson.  Naturally drawn to Emerson, I looked up the article, Chomping at Nature’s Bit by Eli Knapp.  There it was.  “Adapt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.”  

I can agree with this concept.  Nature is very patient.  She wait for us to mess up, then she calmly takes over.  Paved roads break up while she takes over.  Brush grows up in fields that the farmer has kept plowed, our neglect becomes her tapestry.

I have forbidden the groundhog hunt here on our civilized patch.  Build more garden, share it, I say (I’m not the one building the garden, easy for me to say).  Then again, if you need to remove them, do not ever let me know.  I cannot bear the thought.  I’m definitely a human heart here, while they live on instinct, and the reality of the world is that, if we want to keep our crops for harvest, we need to limit their “help” in harvesting!

Back to the subject at hand, Emerson and Nature.  I encourage you to read his essay.  Absorb it.  Be patient with it.

In patience, I seek a word from this essay to inspire you, my readers, to seek.  Difficult at the least, I send you this:  Nature is loved by what is best in us.  It is loved as the city of God.  I dare not say more, at least, not now.  Emerson is difficult in that we cannot take mere quotes and have them realized in and of themselves, they must be coupled with the rest of the essay.  The one thing I have learned from Emerson can bring my defeat as his follower:  Lay this volume down.   You had better never see my essays than to be warped by their attraction out of your own orbit and be made my satellite.  Then let me lay this volume down, and step outdoors where my dog absorbs nature, she is my lesson.  As are the birds, the groundhog, and the breeze which blows against my face.

 

De-Tangle!

It’s been a very long week.  Two weeks.  I tend to become jumbled.  My solution?  I tend to turn to Emerson.  He uses nature as his medium, the following is from his essay “Nature:”

…as objects of science…no man touches these divine natures without becoming, in some degree, himself divine.  Like a new soul, they renew the body…life is no longer irksome…for the first time, we exist.  We become immortal, for we learn that time and space are reflections of matter…they have no affinity…

And then as we look ahead, we need to remember and personalize:

Fear always springs from ignorance…see it to be a lie andyou have already dealt it its mortal blow.

Go inward, to come out on with the breath of God upon your face.  Onward and upward, let us become fellow Americans once more.  Helping each other, aiding each other, depending on one another, bearing even weight to make our burden lighter.

Emerson-ism

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think…you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after our own, but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Lessons from Years of Learning

I’ve learned a lot.  I’m learning more every day.  These are not necessarily in the order of importance, just what comes to mind:

• Just because you read it in the internet, doesn’t make it true.  People post, people edit all the time here.
• Just because it’s on the news, whether it’s CNBC, CNN or FOX, doesn’t make it true.  Reporters report, but just like everyone else, it’s a personal slant, they filter out what they want to, that’s just the way it is.  Why else would there be so many different takes on the same news?  You can refute this, but just think about it.  How many times have I myself wanted to write something, and I take the time to find out, only to discard facts I won’t be using, or won’t do credit to my theme paper?
• Just because you read it in the history books, doesn’t make it true.  People write new books all the time.  Remember, authors write books.  It is written from their perspective, based on facts.  Is there any such thing as “just the facts?”   Only in the court system…
• Check snopes.com before you post.  Just in case.  Then again:  are they really committed to the truth?  Or are they just another propaganda tool, based on someone’s thoughts and commitment to personal truth?

I have chosen not to grant opinion here on a lot of things, I just like to “put them out there.”  I think people need to learn to think for themselves.  I think we need to watch and listen.

One more thing:

• Learn love.

Jon Katz writes:

“when the soul awakens, the search begins and there is no turning back…you are on fire, and the world is suddenly ablaze with light and love…you will sing a different song…the sleeping souls will not hear you, understand you, and you cannot hear or understand them, their news and anger and ritual is a babble, a mystical tongue, a distant roar.  You will live your life outside of the tent, listening to the sounds of the circus…you are on the spiritual path.  And it can never end, only catch a different train to eternity.”

 

 

Revelation of Self

Ralph Waldo Emerson has written:

Lay this volume down.  You had better never see my essays, than to be warped by their attraction out of your own orbit and be made my satellite.”

However, when I am overwhelmed by things I cannot control (like the government, whose representatives believe they are the leaders, and not the peoples’ representative), I find that I can turn to Emerson for grounding here.

A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you.  Do not believe it.  Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.  Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Self reliance.  A satisfaction with your job, well done.  Striving with the best of your ability.  Then you turn, and watch the five deer on the hill, they are watching you and elegantly turn, and gallop away, with their white tails bobbing in unison.  And all is perfect with the world again.  Nature in her great beauty.  She will be here long after we are gone.

Co-habitation Guide

We all must lives by our own set of rules and guidelines, established, if not by our own moral efforts, by those we were raised by.

This particular day, I refer to my stint with nature, as we would have it, versus life inside four walls.

The older I get, the more I respect Emerson’s take on Nature, Spiritual Laws, and the like.  Just don’t show up inside my house, please.

Like fleas!  Do your thing outside, go ahead, but step in, ride in, whatever vehicle you choose, I’ll be waiting for you.  This adventure has been one of physical duty, fall cleaning (every nook and every cranny).  Every day.

And for those of us who appear to be considered hosts, I’ve got a formula just for you! (See photo)

  
Try the eucalyptus and/or lavender, the others stand in line just in case (and makes for a better, more agreeable photo). Mix with coconut oil.  Slather the stuff on, hah! (Put 8 drops in 16 oz of water to mist on your dogs legs to prevent hitch hikers when going out to play)

While I live in the moment, or try to, I look forward to October and their seasonal disappearance, or at least, hibernation.

A Morning Walk

I decided to rise from my slumbering mode this morning to enjoy the morning air!  My morning writing, consisting of a handwritten letter to my daughter, needed posting, and I decided to walk it over.  I could have waited, yes, but I’m glad I didn’t.

I don’t know what I like more, the beauty of nature or her sounds.  I’m grateful I can take advantage of both!  

 The perfect fence adornment!

  Living the life in June, the peony and Queen Anne’s lace share  

  

 I sit this morning on my porch, the Robin sings (he’s the only one I really can remember, and the only one brave enough to hop across my lawn)–oh wait! I just heard the cardinal (but he eludes my vision).

It’s like eating breakfast with Ralph Waldo!  

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.