Poetry Prompt for the Day:
Write a Lock and Key poem (I’m making this up as I go along).
Let the first stanza be a conundrum or a riddle, something locked or troubling or hidden behind a locked door.
Let the second stanza be the key. Offer something in the second stanza that opens the locked door to solve the conundrum or the riddle, or the puzzle of your inner world.
(Extra points if you can figure out how to write it in the shape of a keyhole and a key.)
Gratitude List:
1. Sweet compliment #1: Yesterday, a student brought me some rice pudding she had just made in foods class. It was still warm, and so delicious! She told me, “You just look like someone who would like warm pudding.” She was a little sheepish afterward, because it could sound back-handed, but I love it. I will be the woman who loves warm pudding.
2. Sweet Compliment #2: Yesterday I wore a pair of pants a friend of mine gave me. I love the velvety smoothness of them, and they push me out of my personal comfort zone, fashion-wise, but they really look like me. When I was at the doctor’s office to check out my sore shoulder, the one nurse who came in and out of the room a couple times began referring to me as the “cool outfit lady.” Here’s to a nice comfortable pair of pants.
3. These goldfinches are like dropping of fluttering sunlight.
4. Yesterday’s Earth Day chapel. Once a year, we set up different stations around the old ball field during chapel, and students wander around, tasting vegetables and meadow tea, learning to identify wildflowers on wildflower walks, playing games, fishing in the creek, and other things that the teachers set up for them. This year, we have a long lunch period with chapel as part of it, so the whole time was a lot longer than in the past. I set up a meditation station, with my labyrinth sheet. I read poetry and played recorder and led students who wandered past in breathing meditations and labyrinth walks. It was such a gently joyful time. It ended with a group of middle schoolers who just wanted to keep hanging out in the quiet space. My heart is full.
5. How making small changes in daily rhythms leads to bigger changes in outlook and perspective.
May we walk in Beauty!
“People have said to me, ‘You’re so courageous. Aren’t you ever afraid?’ I laugh because it’s not possible to be courageous if you’re not afraid. Courage doesn’t happen without fear; it happens in spite of fear. The word courage derives from ‘coeur’, the French for ‘heart.’ True courage happens only when we face our fear and choose to act anyway, out of love.” —Julia Butterfly Hill
“Where is our comfort but in the free, uninvolved, finally mysterious beauty and grace of this world that we did not make, that has no price? Where is our sanity but there? Where is our pleasure but in working and resting kindly in the presence of this world?” —Wendell Berry
“Every country should have a Ministry of Peace” —Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire
“Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.” —Tom Robbins
“I never want to lose the story-loving child in me. A story that meant one thing to me when I was forty may mean something quite different to me today.” —Madeleine L’Engle
Mockingbird Chronicles 