A Still Waters Day

I brought my 2015 Blessing Jar with me today, and poured its contents out on the floor at my feet. I sit in the grape-vine rocking chair looking out at the ancient oak tree as I read a few: grateful for a working furnace and a comfortable home; grateful for a good nights sleep; grateful for enjoying watching a favorite TV show.

I meditate for a while before slipping comfortably into napping, still sitting in my rocker. I sip a cup of tea upon waking and then decide to go out and enjoy the beautiful spring day.

Walking out to the labyrinth, I recall having been told in 1988 I had osteoarthritis and needed a hip replacement. Fortunately, they did not do that surgery because I was deemed too young....

I feel so fortunate I am able to walk.

 

Aware that I've been coming to Still Waters for over 20 years, I feel profound gratitude to and for Delcy and Tom Kuhlman for creating and maintaining this space.

Walking the labyrinth, I appreciate just being where I am, putting my feet on the earth in front of me.

 

I momentarily ponder the person I was those many years ago when I first came here before settling back in to being present on the path. 

Loving the beyond-their-peak-but-still-fragrant daffodils, I think of a woman I introduced to Still Waters who had come and helped plant some of these many bulbs. I wish her blessings on her path. 

For just an instant, I feel nostalgia about not keeping a paper-and-pen journal at this time in my life. 

I hear hawk in the woods nearby. Crow caws. Butterfly and bee are my companions among the blooms in their phases of letting go. Below the hill, by the lake, Mr. and Mrs. Canadian Goose seem to be planning a family. 

I bend to pick up a small branch in the middle of my path. It is perfectly the shape of a dowsing rod.

I enjoy that there are no choices I must make of which way to go here in the labyrinth. Day-to-day life is filled with many crossroads, and we must choose. 

 

A favorite poem, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, comes to mind:   

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 

And sorry I could not travel both 

And be one traveler, long I stood 

And looked down one as far as I could 

To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

Then took the other, as just as fair, 

And having perhaps the better claim, 

Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 

Though as for that the passing there 

Had worn them really about the same, 

And both that morning equally lay 

In leaves no step had trodden black. 

Oh, I kept the first for another day! 

Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 

I doubted if I should ever come back. 

I shall be telling this with a sigh 

Somewhere ages and ages hence: 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— 

I took the one less traveled by, 

And that has made all the difference.