Gratitude

May wonder shake us all from our "sleep"

Dawn lights the prairie as I walk.

flicker calls 
as dawn tints sky azure blue 
almost too beautiful

This morning I left the house in starlit darkness and walked the draws and ridges in quiet so deep it felt like the whole world was sleeping. Then as dawn snuffed the stars, the blue that crept across the sky was so pure and fresh it almost hurt. What a gift each day is!

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My gratitude at the beginning of this calendar year is simply for being alive and able to take in the sheer beauty of sky and earth, day and night.

For being awake to the ordinary wonder of life on a planet that spins through space at just the right distance from the sun to be warmed but not burned, rotating at a speed that gives us a day length perfect for our circadian rhythms, the planet’s axis tilted just enough to create the seasons and a cycle of birth and death and birth again….

I am grateful to be part of life on this extraordinary planet, difficult and painful as it can be, yet animated by beauty every single day.

I think of the last line of Mary Oliver’s poem “Gratitude,” a lyrical catalogue of the ordinary wonders she saw and heard and felt on her Cape Cod walks, ending with this line of gratitude for the gifts that keep her from sleep-walking through her days:

so the gods shake us from our sleep.

May you find wonders each day to shake you from your sleep, that busy-ness of doing that keeps us from being engaged in the beauty of each moment. And may those ordinary wonders wake you to the awe and love imbued in this life.

Blessings of the New Year to all!