Cosmic Sunshine

Sunshine opens my eyes as view a sunrise. The daytime leaves me with a strikingly different view of the galaxy than the night where the stars and moon color the distances beyond comprehension. Stopped in my tracks by the fast movement in life, I don't have to stop it to enjoy it. I can ride with it, surfing time, as visions of color permeate my consciousness. There it is, the larger picture that is so vast that I am humbled by the changing scenes that flash by with the flicker of a wing and a leap of a trio of deer.

Can I open my senses in the same way that I open my eyes? To open the reality that for a second is before my eyes I need not capture it, but be with it, as it is here. In memory of all the that is now the past that allowed this one to be born, I live.

Immerse Yourself In Winter

The weather has become cold, the days have become shorter, and everything familiar about winter in the Northeastern United States is here. The familiar grey skies overcast with few breaks in the perpetual ceiling of clouds keep us scurrying around as though hurrying will make the sun shine. Where the depths of winter loom with the joy of holiday song and light behind, we groan and moan, and can't wait for the first crocus to bloom in hole left by the melting snow.

 It is a new year and the first full month of Winter. It is a season where it is easy to hole up and grab our video games, read our books, and watch our movies in an effort to hibernate. For some of us needing warmer temperatures, we need to find any way we can to stay warm. So where do we live in the season where everything seems dreary and ghastly grey?

 In recent posts written about community, the barefoot wonder of community with other people can sometimes bring a mix of obnoxious cacophony and good humor. We cannot live completely alone, but we can take in this cold weather and feel it surround us while we take some time out for solitude to listen. The sounds of rain drops melting snow during a warm spell. The sound of a radiator hissing as it warms us as we watch the spaces around us from inside. To listen and connect to all that is happening even in the midst of silence.

Somehow the stillness takes more time to notice than the busy rush of daily life. It is in its vast presence that nature emerges taking our breath, our life, and forming all of winter with the breath of all living beings. The conifers revel in their chance to show off their needles as people everywhere notice their wintry white covering. Colors are seen as birds that stayed home take flight and fill their air with sounds of their chirping. Stop and feel the presence of the seasonal temperatures grip your skin, expand your soul, and comfort your sense of living. It is as invigorating as it is peaceful. Let the newness of feeling become familiar so that the familiarity can let you engage it with barefoot wonder.*

* Just don't wander into the snow barefoot without a way to warm up shortly afterwards. Hypothermia and frostbite are no way to enjoy the wintry climate. 

Gathering Together

People have gathered together to share the goodness from their lives for as long as people have been around to harvest of the fruits of their hopes and dreams. These hopes and dreams are often visions of community and prosperity; a sense of well being and home. This has allowed them to see and imagine what shapes their interactions, and to form community based on their common needs and experiences.  As a way of coming together to discover and encounter community, home, food,farmers markets are created to form a community full of aromas and sounds, sights and satisfied taste buds, and also the salutations to the new experiences greeting our sense of touch.

Within these avenues of samples, scintillations appear in people's eyes as they meander slowly among neighbors and through the cascade of tents and booths  looking for the finds that will nourish and delight them for sale by neighbors near and far. Life is formed by the stories we tell, the laughter from our hearts, and the smiles as life is made by the hands that grow it.  I feel alive a part of this interaction as important as the labors shared have become our memory that is always an important part of our lives. We fill our senses with flowers and coffee beans and the days loaves from the bakery as music fills the air from radios and performers. It is here we create community, experience our lives and begin our stroll along the hopes of our neighbors.


The day at the market is a day to join with neighbors and strangers, people from abroad, and from our home. To live with the fruition of our lives, to experience with our senses, to know the energy that is raw and creative flowing from our hearts, our tastes, our moments. At the Rochester Public Market in Rochester, New York, gatherings form on Saturdays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays to bring the ingredients together that yield smiles and joy, a time shared, a friend made, a voter registered, and a community built. The markets near you, and the markets near me are in my understanding the connection of the experience we together have in the building of today and tomorrow from the common dreams of yesterday.

Sights at the Rochester Public Market on a Saturday in June.

The Birth of a Season

Time cannot be captured or harnessed, it can only be lived in and made the most of where we are with what we have. Seasons come into being as nature forms their very composition. Spring has come for the northern hemisphere in 2012, and not without the depth and variation that grew from winter's restless spirit.

As nature brings new days from the darkness of night, it also brings spring, from the seeming emptiness that is winter. Even the sun feels friendlier and less hostile as it begins to blanket the northern hemisphere with more of a gentle touch. Plants begin to grow again, and being among the life that is constantly taking shape opens my eyes and ears to what is about to become a memory.

Since time cannot be captured, aside from in photographs and writings. Maybe in the layers of flora that make the setting for our lives, we can experience what has come and what is yet to be found. It is in transition that life is lived, because even the seemingly static things change. Watch the stars in the sky for a few hours and you can see how they have appeared to move as Earth spins on its axis.

Yet in springtime, we can be in movement as we dance to the sound of the rain falling around us with the movement of our bodies with nature connecting us to this changing time. We can smell the aroma of violets grown wild and free and let their growth inspire us to live vibrantly and fully. We only have one life that we choose to form and react to in a multitude of ways. As colors form in nature, emotions flow in life, unexpectedly and beautifully as they transpire. With the expression of our connection, we can live in the changing times and see the opportunity to make something with the chance to reach to the steadier moments and let our choices fill our lives with wonder.

Growth nurtured by interconnectedness.

Wild vegetables grown by shade and sun, affirming the need for the dark and light.

Color bursting from the end of winter.

Last year's growth enriching the soil for a new year.

Reaching out of the ground that was scarred by winter's touch.

Eternal Skies

It's hard to watch the sky. It draws you into its breadth and brings you to a sense that everything is changing and moving so fast. How can we ever expect life to slow down? It is the sky that brings you into being with everything that is a part of our present reality because it draws us towards everything to the east, the west, the south, and the north. It is space and it is real.

At the same time, watching the sky as it changes becomes a chance to experience the patterns of the home we have here on our earth. While it's hue isn't always blue, it is a way to slow down and take it in. To me, I can sit there on a mountaintop or porch by a lake and see the distance covered by the sky. I can never reach the top by walking. As lightning cuts it open and lets the rain pour to the depths and the blueness seems to go up forever, the sky remains our canopy and that of all of life.

As the clouds change shape and form the paths to elsewhere, they are still for but a minute. As we can look up and become part of the earth we find the sky helps us live again.

Multiple layers of sky moving quickly as the sun sets.