Category: Summer 2024

While walking through the garden,
thick now with blossoms and bees,
I noticed again the perfection,
how every little detail
is so artfully designed,
each part serving the other,
each playing its part In the whole.
And to think it all simply arose
in this unlikely place—a rock,
spinning in circles around a star
amid trillions of dancing stars
in an unimaginably vast space—
at precisely the right distance
for everything to be, to have form,
and life, and to flourish
is beyond imagination.
It simply, miraculously, is.
Yes.

Because the jewelweed beams brightly now
from nearly every inch of the hillside,
it would be easy to take their orchid-like blossoms
for granted, to walk past, without so much
as a nod of recognition. It would be my loss.
So it goes with many of life’s scattered gems–
moments, faces, shades of light, morsels
of chocolate or bread, children’s laughter.
It just goes to show how abundantly
we are blessed, that we could so casually
take such gifts as given and deserved.

Sometimes,
seeing what’s right there
in front of you
is more than
enough.

Bee balm. Bee balm.
Bing bong. Ding dong.
Their name sings to me
like an old school bell
and I stand before them
grinning at the way they
make me think of clowns.
Secretly, I adore them.
And how like heaven
this patch of them
must seem to bees!

The oak grove at noon in mid-July,
vibrant and green,
rising from the lowlands
that in spring were deep
with water, defiantly sings
its resilience. The oaks,
standards of hope,
strong, glad, and thriving,
live their words: Keep on.
Keep on.

I’m writing to you late in the evening on Saturday, July 13, the evening of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. In light of this sobering moment in our nation’s history, I’m postponing the next episode of my little course on experiencing more happiness in your life.

Not that happiness isn’t important. In our stressful times, we need the perspective happiness offers more than ever. But consequential events deserve our thoughtful attention, a reverent pause to contemplate their meanings.

I suggest as you go through your days this week, you recall the saying I shared with you some time ago: “Look around you. Appreciate what you have. Nothing will be the same in a year.”

Be kind. I wish you peace.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay}

Remember when you were a kid
and you would hold your arms
straight out at your sides and then
twirl and twirl and twirl until dizziness
hurled you, laughing, onto the grass
and you would lay there on your back
looking up at the branches of the trees
whirling and whirling above you
for the longest time,
and wasn’t it beautiful!
Wasn’t it fun!

Hey, pretty petunia, old friend.
It wouldn’t be summer without you, you know.
Why, I remember when I was only three
how you lined the path to the dirt-floored cellar
where Aunt Maybelle kept her wringer washer,
your scent mixing with the fragrance of soap
as she washed clothes, and how kittens played
their games of hide and seek beneath your blooms.
That long you’ve colored my summers, three-quarters
of a century now. And still you’re with me, smiling
outside my friend’s kitchen door, her cat
curled around you, loving your purple, sharing your sun.

Here, in the freshness of the morning, one song sings.
One clear call penetrates the air, the leaves, the grasses.
One note, holding every sound, the voice of every throat
that utters waking, that utters joy, merged into one,
rolling across the waters, pushing into the brush,
sliding down the leaves of trees, rising to the sky,
wordlessly singing Thank You, singing Yes.

A friend told me that if
I want to store something
that I see in my memory bank
to blink my eyes, deliberately,
as if my eyelids were the shutter
of a camera. I do this often now
and suppose it’s also what
the earth is doing when
she closes her eyelids
at night: remembering.
Everything. In case it all
should vanish before morning.
I join her. I intend to carry as much
of it with me as my soul can hold.
Just in case we turn out to be
the very last ones
ever to be here.