Tag: Mark Nepo

Walking @ Daybreak. With Shooting Stars.

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You know the drill.  Morning walk @ Daybreak.  Cove Island Park. 725 consecutive days (almost like in a row).

It started about 4 days ago.  I’d climb out of the car.  I’d walk ~100 yards and there it goes.

Left eye would flicker.  No, it was closer to a camera flash.

Click.

Pause.

Click.

Pause.

Click.

And this would continue on for 15-20 minutes.

And it’s left eye, not the right, the right being subject to serious injury with back story here: “I need to read.” Which led to the following complications @ “Damn Well Need to See” and ‘No More Tears. Here’s to Good Outcomes.” And “Muro 128.”

So, I’m a bit rattled.  One eye at half-mast is serious.  Two eyes down, now that’s……..unthinkable. Continue reading “Walking @ Daybreak. With Shooting Stars.” →

Good Morning

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And on this uneventful morning, the soft rain makes the oak outside my window dip enough for the early light to stream across the braided mountain hanging on my wall. Now the thread on the border swells with the sun and seems for the moment the source of all strength. Then the sun steps higher in the sky, and the thread that holds all things together goes back to work.

~ Mark Nepo, from “The Golden Thread” (Patheos.com, April, 13, 2020)

Photo: Rain Drops by DEmiJAN Me

it’s hard to bow to the vastness of the sea when being pulled under

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I was walking our dog during the pandemic, the neighborhood empty, the clouds heavy, and, through my headphones, the music of a man now gone, the love from his soul helping me keep my head above water. And though it’s hard to bow to the vastness of the sea when being pulled under, hard to believe in the merit of light when lost in the dark, hard to wait on love when painfully lonely—these larger truths never stop being true. Even as I voice this, someone is dying in the hall of an overcrowded hospital, while another is lifted from their own hell by the grace of a kindness no one saw coming. As if the spirit of the one dying arrives like pollen in the heart of the one stuck in hell, giving them just enough to begin again. If we could only give the extra warmth we receive to someone who is shivering. If we could shed the masks that keep us from ourselves, there would be enough to save the world.

~ Mark Nepo, “Sheltered-in-Place” (FB, April 5, 2020)

Notes: Photo – Axios. Quote: Thank you Make Believe Boutique. Inspired by Ray’s post: It’s all about Perspective

Monday Morning Wake Up Call

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Why not call the
moment of certainty, the fleeting moment
when everything that ever lived is right
behind my pounding heart, why not call
that moment: Beat-of-the-thousand-wings-
of-God-inside-my-chest.

~ Mark Nepo, from The Way Under The Way: The Place of True Meeting 

Notes: Bird gif via Your Eyes Blaze Out

Lightly child, lightly

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We start out wanting everything, never imagining how much everything weighs. Then we can’t swallow things that eat at our gut. We call this integrity. Then one by one, we’re forced to put things down in order to go on. Like a bird dropping food three times its size in order to fly.

~ Mark Nepo, from “How to Empty” in Things That Join the Sea and the Sky: Field Notes on Living 

Notes:

  • Photo:  (via Your Eyes Blaze Out)
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”