Sandhill crane seeks rest before the flight north to home. I journey with birds.
(photo by Leo Dehler)
“Sometimes the people around you won’t understand your journey. They don’t need to – it’s not for them.”
Joubert Botha
“It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes, everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed, is you.”
Eric Roth
“You will never completely be at home again because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”
Sitting in the chair facing the garden where the birdbath was nestled into the Asiatic lilies, Sedum, and kitchen herbs, I listened to a book on tape while my eyes focused on the scene before me. I watched Robin splash with abandon, wings lifting and flinging the water into the air then showering down upon his head. I laughed as he could not get enough on this unseasonably hot spring evening. When he flew away, his partner showed up splashing to her hearts content; back and forth they went, one after the other. I watched for an hour as Blue Jay inserted himself when he could, competing for the highest splashes, and trading off with his partner as well.
I glanced down at my phone deciding to check the news feed and read the headline, “Phoenix area can’t meet groundwater demands over the next century.” I looked back up at Robin delighting in fresh water, cooling, drinking, bathing to his hearts content. The paradox was not lost on me, the yin and yang, joy and sadness, abundance and lack in this one moment, one feeding the other, different and the same. Sitting in the silence of awareness with playfulness before me, feeling joy and sadness, love and fear.
“Life is strong and fragile. It’s a paradox… It’s both things, like quantum physics: It’s a particle and a wave at the same time. It all exists all together.”
Joan Jett
“In contradiction and paradox, you can find truth.”
Denis Villeneuve
“That’s the great paradox of living on this earth, that in the midst of great pain you can have great joy as well. If we didn’t have those things, we’d just be numb.”
Kathy Mattea
Ongoing Resource List: Reading for Heart and Mind
The Gene Keys: Emracing Your Higher Purpose by Riuchard Rudd
Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Inform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
Energy Speaks: Messages from Spirit on Living, Loving, and Awakening by Lee Harris
Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create an New One by Dr. Joe Dispenza
The Women by Kristin Hannah
Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe by Brian Thomas Swimme
The Mastery of Love, Don Miguel Ruiz
Change Your Thoughts—Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao, by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, by Mirabai Starr
The Four Agreements: A Toltec Book of Wisdom by Don Miguel Ruiz
Mindfulness and Grief by Heather Stang
How We Live Is How We Die by Pema Chödron
The Bhagavad Gita, Translated by Eknath Easwaran
St Francis of Assisi: Brother of Creation by Mirabai Starr
Wild Wisdom Edited by Neil Douglas-Klotz
Earth Prayers From Around The World, Ed by Elizabeth Roberts & Elias Amidon
The Tao of Relationships by Ray Grigg
Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue
Unconditional Love and Forgiveness by Edith R. Stauffer, Ph.D.
Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance by Joseph M. Marshall III
Art & Fear by David Bayless & Ted Orland
Quantum-Touch by Richard Gordon
The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Persons Path Through Depression by Eric Maisel, PhD
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris
Forever Ours: Real Stories of Immortality and Living by Janis Amatuzio
Personal Power Through Awareness by Sanaya Roman
Violence & Compassion by His Holiness the Dahlai Lama
Teachings on Love by Thich Nhat Hanh
Devotions by Mary Oliver
To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donohue
Meditations From the Mat by Rolf Gates and Katrina Kenison
The House of Belonging: poems by David Whyte
Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Soul an Archaeology Edited by Phil Cousineau
A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield
Listening Point by Sigurd Olson
I Sit Listening to the Wind by Judith Duerk
Dancing Moons by Nancy Wood
The Soul of Rumi, Translations by Coleman Barks
Keep Going by Joseph M. Marshall III
Arriving at your own Door by Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
The Hidden Secrets of Water by Paolo Consigli
Conquest of Mind by Eknath Easwaran
Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay
Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t) by Brene Brown
Practicing Peace in Times of War by Pema Chodron
When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
Unattended Sorrow by Stephen Levine
Joy in Loving, Mother Theresa
The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
Let Your LIfe Speak by Parker Palmer
Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh
The Essence of the Upanishads by Eknath Easwaran
Welcoming the Unwelcome by Pema Chodron
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through The Ways Of Animals by Jamie Sams and David Carson
Goldfinch perched on the deck railing
gazes at the space where the red feeder
used to hang. Avian flu sweeps through
taking great numbers in wake.
We pull back our feeders creating
social distance in the flock—
all the colors of life
greeting us each morning and evening
with songs and chatter
as we smile and go about our day.
Pandemic, war, economic uncertainty,
food instability, wildlife illness,
all challenging our faith and
belief in the world as we know it.
All the ways we have accepted
the way things are rather
than the way things could be.
The way we have learned
rather than the way of the heart.
Three friends at lunch table
challenge ourselves to talk about
something light and positive. We try.
We drift back. As painful
as our world is right now
we commit to look and feel
then turn to where we find hope.
Everything changes.
Not clinging to the pain
but letting it move through.
Not holding to our fear but
breathing it out.
Like the small yellow bird, we
sit in the present as a future unfolds.
With hearts and minds open
we take the seat of consciousness
and understanding.
We find connection to
compassion and love.
“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.”
Erich Fromm
“In these times, in these uncertain times, I will remain open to the miracle that is each moment.”
Jacquie Godden
“I find myself in the time between selves.”
Alla Bozarth-Campbell
On Going Resource List
The Gene Keys: Emracing Your Higher Purpose by Riuchard Rudd
Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Inform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
Energy Speaks: Messages from Spirit on Living, Loving, and Awakening by Lee Harris
Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create an New One by Dr. Joe Dispenza
The Women by Kristin Hannah
Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe by Brian Thomas Swimme
The Mastery of Love, Don Miguel Ruiz
Change Your Thoughts—Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao, by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, by Mirabai Starr
The Four Agreements: A Toltec Book of Wisdom by Don Miguel Ruiz
Mindfulness and Grief by Heather Stang
How We Live Is How We Die by Pema Chödron
The Bhagavad Gita, Translated by Eknath Easwaran
St Francis of Assisi: Brother of Creation by Mirabai Starr
Wild Wisdom Edited by Neil Douglas-Klotz
Earth Prayers From Around The World, Ed by Elizabeth Roberts & Elias Amidon
The Tao of Relationships by Ray Grigg
Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue
Unconditional Love and Forgiveness by Edith R. Stauffer, Ph.D.
Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance by Joseph M. Marshall III
Art & Fear by David Bayless & Ted Orland
Quantum-Touch by Richard Gordon
The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Persons Path Through Depression by Eric Maisel, PhD
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris
Forever Ours: Real Stories of Immortality and Living by Janis Amatuzio
Personal Power Through Awareness by Sanaya Roman
Violence & Compassion by His Holiness the Dahlai Lama
Teachings on Love by Thich Nhat Hanh
Devotions by Mary Oliver
To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donohue
Meditations From the Mat by Rolf Gates and Katrina Kenison
The House of Belonging: poems by David Whyte
Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Soul an Archaeology Edited by Phil Cousineau
A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield
Listening Point by Sigurd Olson
I Sit Listening to the Wind by Judith Duerk
Dancing Moons by Nancy Wood
The Soul of Rumi, Translations by Coleman Barks
Keep Going by Joseph M. Marshall III
Arriving at your own Door by Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
The Hidden Secrets of Water by Paolo Consigli
Conquest of Mind by Eknath Easwaran
Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay
Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t) by Brene Brown
Practicing Peace in Times of War by Pema Chodron
When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
Unattended Sorrow by Stephen Levine
Joy in Loving, Mother Theresa
The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
Let Your LIfe Speak by Parker Palmer
Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh
The Essence of the Upanishads by Eknath Easwaran
Welcoming the Unwelcome by Pema Chodron
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through The Ways Of Animals by Jamie Sams and David Carson
