Lazy Days of Comfort

I love the unfolding of spring into summer. Sweet scented orange blossoms caressing the evening breeze and floating through the window. Lilac blossoms bursting out in a brief frenzy of perfume. The return of the butterflies. Sitting in the garden and feeling the warm sunlight kissing my skin. My lullaby into warm darkness: hearing the comforting drone of a lawnmower in the distance as the last vestiges of evening sunlight slant across the yard and porch.

These are golden moments when time stands still.

Tick Tock Tick Tock,
Jumping over the hands of the clock
Grabbing the moment and hanging on
Gently, gently…drawing an eon…
Out of the well of time.

Is time flying for anyone else? I’ll be taking an extended leave from work toward the end of the month to recover from surgery. I’ll be suspended from my usual pursuits – work, household chores, walking around the city, meeting friends. I’ll be in suspension while I heal, a cocoon of gestation as my body emerges from limitations and pain to…recovery and discovery.

I’ll have plenty of time to experience the abundant nature we have in our yard. We’re at the end of the suburbs, not quite rural, but with fields adjoining our property. Our neighbors include mother horses with their frisky colts, jack rabbits and pheasants, garden snakes, bees, mice, a scrub jay who returns every year to our yard, hummingbirds and woodpeckers and many more feathered friends. We enjoy vegetable gardens, citrus and nut trees, grapes and berries, and a beautiful new maple tree my husband planted last month that will explode in crimson color in October. Things are usually pretty busy around here. I try to stop and actually take in the abundance we have rather than flying by in passing with an afterthought of “I should spend more time with this.”

Life finds a way of giving me what I want, in this case time to enjoy what I have, even if the method is unexpected and long and painful in manifesting. Oh, if you could only hear the sigh of relief and acceptance for what is unfolding drowning out the natural anxiety that accompanies injury.

How will you enjoy your summer?  I hope you'll slow down, if only for a moment.  You can find an eternity in a moment.

Beloved One, you who made this beautiful abundant world for us to enjoy in all its sensuousness, I surrender to my body, this instrument of experience my spirit resides in while here on this earth.

Majeeda Rosa

Resistance is Futile

This has been a week of grinching, gnashing teeth and banging head. Bad things have happened. Sad things have happened. Misunderstandings and resistance seem to be the actions of the day. Polarization of thought, both in politics and personal life, has occurred repeatedly.

And amongst all this… a simple kindness.

The power of a simple kindness is amazing. At work, my cube mate brought us pretty little flowers. I’ve been so cheered every time I look at them. They calm me down. I’m reminded that nothing is so frantic or important that a simple cup of cheer – whether tea or flowers – shouldn’t be enjoyed. A little touch of grace amidst the chaos.

They remind me to be kind to myself as well as others.

I took a moment to enjoy the flowers. I began to actually notice little scraps of quotes and prayer I keep pinned to my wall, the rosary I made with rose petal beads for my mother many years ago, the cinnamon and checkered tail feather of a flicker I found on a walk. Among the pinnings, I have a card I bought in Glastonbury many years ago; it says:

Just BE

One of the shortest and most profound prayers I can follow.

Take care my friends, and remember the little kindnesses.

Majeeda Rosa