Birthday Reflections and Gratitude
“Now is the time to free the heart,
Let all intentions and worries stop,
Free the joy inside the self,
Awaken to the wonder of your life.
Open your eyes and see the friends,
Whose hearts recognize your face as kin,
Those whose kindness watchful and near,
Encouraging you to live everything here.
See the gifts the years have given,
Things your effort could never earn,
The health to enjoy who you want to be
And the mind to mirror mystery.” – John O’Donohue
“Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life.” – Mary Oliver
Happy Birthday to me and 9th Birthday to Abby, my birthday buddy.
Blessed with family, friends, love.
Sharing a few of my favorite things … poetry, quotes, reflections.
“What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
And to stay in the arena, striving, coming up short, with great enthusiasm, devotion daring greatly.
Awaken to the wonder of life.
To stay awake each day with inquiry and curiosity.
To keep unlearning, relearning, growing, becoming, no matter age.
Reflection and presence.
Kindness and generosity of spirit.
Hope, resilience and peace that passes understanding.
Grace, gratitude, laughter, slowing, savoring, joy, delight.
Deepening faith and trust in God’s plan, not my own.
With reverence, wonder, awe.
Seeking wisdom rather than knowledge.
Joy on the journey wherever it leads.
To celebrate each day.
And most of all, cast light.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”― Theodore Roosevelt
