Tag Archives: joy

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without earbuds

Here is a mystery.

This picture is for scale. I went for a walk three days ago, without earbuds. I walk without earbuds so I can listen to the birds. And I mimic their calls.  I have a series of photographs of the latest bird who flew closer to see who the mimic was. See if you can guess the bird. She is not visible in this picture.

When I started the walk, a person ran by with earbuds. I feel so sad, seeing that they are cut off from nature even when they are outside. I grieve for the disconnect. And then I have a magical mysterious interaction with a very unexpected bird and joy returns…

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Forgiveness 2

I wrote this poem in 2009 when I was struggling with forgiveness and wanting to forgive. How do we forgive when someone does not apologize? When they do not explain nor listen to your hurt and grief? Yet forgiveness is internal in each of us. The external is reconciliation and that requires listening from both sides.

Forgiveness

I want to forgive something
Someone
In fact a group
Something that hurt a lot
I’ve tried logic
I tell myself
“It was an expression of concern”

My heart doesn’t agree
It is sullen
Immobile and grumpy
It whispers
“They have not apologized”
It whispers
“When people say you’re crazy
It could be a joke
An expression of concern
It wasn’t
It was a palm held out
At arm’s length
To distance me.”

My head argues
“That’s what it felt like to you.
You don’t know their intentions.”

I want to write
A poem of forgiveness
Hoping my heart will follow

My conscious doesn’t write my poems
My conscious wrestles with an idea
The poem comes out of this struggle
I look at the poem I’ve written
I think,
“That is what I would like
my conscious heart to feel.”
My poem is often more generous
than my conscious feels

My poems are not mine
They are a gift
From the unconscious
It is much larger
Than the small conscious me
I dream of feeling envy
I climb into a bathtub
And transform myself
To battle a trickster
We are transported
To the bottom of the ocean

In the ocean
The trickster and I are one
It is unlimited
It is not my unconscious
There is no separation
It is all unconscious

I did not think
A poem would give forgiveness
But pain drove me
Into the sea
I am connected
You gave me these pearls
Thank you

 

I am submitting this to the Daily Prompt: jiffy. I wish this could happen in a jiffy…. but it is slow….

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sunrise

Joy  today. I am so deeply thankful that this health insurance bill has been voted down. Health insurance because it was not going to improve health care. It would have increased profits and worsened citizens’ health.

Our chorus performed last night and the music is still playing in my head… from a Shawn Kirchner piece. “It shall be well with you…..”

I took this in 2012.

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no wheels

I took this hiking Mount Walker weekend before last. We are so close to so many hikes, to the forest, to the woods, to the wild rhododendrons, to the trees. That is where I go to heal, away from the current attempt to rob more people of basic health care, my poorest and oldest and most disabled patients….And then I return and keep working on local health care and national health care.

What is so bad about spending our health care dollar to take care of all of us? The next most expensive system spends half as much per person. Our system is set up for corporations to make money and it is destroying people and in turn destroying small businesses and our city and county governments cut services to pay outrageous health insurance costs.

I want to go back to the woods….

For the Daily Prompt: wheel.

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joy

This photograph is from 2011. The Synchronized Swimming competitions took an enormous amount of time and work for the girls and work for the parents. And the coaches and the people who held the meets and judges. I am looking through photos and the girls had such fun together, older and younger, beautiful teamwork and joy.

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temperance

Temperance: for Blogging from A to Z, the letter T. What does temperance mean to you? Do you ever say “I feel temperate.” Do you call someone else temperate? Is it a virtue to you?

Temperance is one of the four Cardinal Virtues which go back to the Greeks, Aristotle and Plato. But it meant self control then, not abstinence from liquor. Self control, self-restraint, moderation…I think we could still value that but our culture of drama and advertising and self-promotion and stardom doesn’t very much.

dictionary.com temperance

noun

1.moderation or self-restraint in action, statement, etc.; self-control.

2.habitual moderation in the indulgence of a natural appetite or passion, especially in the use of alcoholic liquors.

3.total abstinence from alcoholic liquors.

But… let’s look at the word origin:

Word Origin and History for temperance

n. mid-14c., “self-restraint, moderation,” from Anglo-French temperaunce (mid-13c.), from Latin temperantia “moderation,” from temperans, present participle of temperare “to moderate” (see temper ). Latin temperantia was used by Cicero to translate Greek sophrosyne “moderation.” In English, temperance was used to render Latin continentia or abstinentia, specifically in reference to drinking alcohol and eating; hence by early 1800s it came to mean “abstinence from alcoholic drink.”

Webster 1913 from everything2.com: temperance

1. Habitual moderation in regard to the indulgence of the natural appetites and passions; restrained or moderate indulgence; moderation; as, temperance in eating and drinking; temperance in the indulgence of joy or mirth; specifically, moderation, and sometimes abstinence, in respect to using intoxicating liquors.

2. Moderation of passion; patience; calmness; sedateness.
[R.] “A gentleman of all temperance.” Shak.

He calmed his wrath with goodly temperance. Spenser.

3. State with regard to heat or cold; temperature.
[Obs.] “Tender and delicate temperance.” Shak.

Temperance society, an association formed for the purpose of diminishing or stopping the use of alcoholic liquors as a beverage.
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I want to take words back and use them again and expand them back to previous meanings. Why is Webster 1913 more elaborate and subtle in definitions than Dictionary.com? Have you used the word temperate? Try it today…I will be temperate in my emotions, temperate in eating, temperate when driving…what will you be temperate about today?

I took the photograph from Marrowstone Island… the colors used to paint the sky are not temperate at all, are they?