I don’t know when we have had such a relentlessly rainy day. No matter. I went to the Landis Valley Herb Faire this morning, and got to chat with Tina and Maryanne, Sonya and David, and Sarah and Chris. If you’re in Lancaster/York and looking for something to do tomorrow, you ought to go! Check out The Essential Herbal stand in the big barn–you’ll know them by the silk scarves; Herbs from the Labyrinth in the Isaac Landis House–and walk the labyrinth; and Sonya’s birdhouses–in the lawn in front of the Herbs from the Labyrinth pop-up. There are a thousand plants to buy! And scarves and birdhouses and soaps and face cream and teas and balms and salves and lemonade. . .
When I walk a labyrinth, as I work my way toward the center, I pause at each turning, and remind myself to let it go. Sometimes I am very intentional about specific things to release, and other times, like today, I just straighten my spine and remind myself to let the anxieties and rage and sadness fall away (they’ll come back again when they need to me to unpack them). Then on the way outward, I pause again at each turning, and remind myself to pick it up: not the things I dropped on the way in, but the responsibility, the accountability, the energy, the desire–whatever I need in order to move forward.
Gratitude List:
1. Getting out in the world, bumping into beloveds and exchanging pleasantries with strangers.
2. The Merlin app. My dad has been raving about it, so I added it, too. Record the dawn chorus, and it tells you who’s been singing!
3. The exciting about this little temporary job I am taking up is that I will be an aide in a kindergarten class taught by one of my former students! The circles are sacred.
4. Finding my way home
5. I don’t get bored
May we walk in Beauty!
“When people ask me what Emily Dickinson poems are about, I want to run away and hide, simply because for me, some poems are not about the ‘about’. They are metaphysical spells that you hold close and don’t really want to elaborate on. They help you to go on when you have nothing else left to go on with, the kind of poems you remember even when you don’t want to remember them.” —Ilya Kaminsky
“There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things; it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect. The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient, kindness inevitably reveals itself. Something deep in the human soul seems to depend on the presence of kindness; something instinctive in us expects it, and once we sense it we are able to trust and open ourselves.” —John O’Donohue
“In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.” —Phil Ochs
“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” ―Jane Goodall
“Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.” ―Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Mockingbird Chronicles 