Sunshine

The sun shines all over this planet leaving energy for plants to grow and light to illuminate our lives. For an emergence of sunshine is a creative force, cast on the snow and reflected in a glistening light and as rays like fingers reach through the clouds to the terrain of the Earth. It finds its opening in the crags and fissures along the surface of life as a guiding beacon into understanding warmth.

Our eyes open to the first light and close when our body calls upon us for a time of rest and renewal. As the sunshine bursts across the scenes of our lives there is the space to discover what is here in our lives, what is deepened and expanded in every moment. In recent days, I have felt the sunshine of new opportunities in the lives of friends who have danced into the dawn. I feel the gaiety of all we gather in the stories of our days. The stories that begin to glow with the happiness that surprises us as sunshine glows from the places that were once dark.

This is the sharing of sunshine. A dance with a dear friend, a smile with a new one, an understanding nod in an empathetic ear. As we illuminate life with the truth of who we are, we can bear the anxieties and fears that carry our hearts into realms of deepest need. As we hear how we're not alone, as we gather ourselves to trust life at its core, we can begin to soar together.

           

Feeling the Heartbeat of our Lives

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart." Helen Keller

There is a rhythm that exists in each of us, beating like a drum, ringing like a bell, circulating and moving together with every living thing. What is felt with one heart can convey the human experience. The idea of the human experience may be cliche, but the experiences are real and felt in powerful ways. It was recently on a walk with a friend that I saw again how the actions of others ripple past the immediate interaction that took place in any given moment. The walk itself embodied this, and the understanding of human pain and joy that together in paradoxical ways form our lives. It is hard to understand how sorrow is part of the darkness that fuses angst, disbelief, and sadness to the moments that we wish we could hurry and leave behind. These adversities can be pivotal in helping us feel the warmth when cherished and held with a tapestry of connection.

In the heartbeat of life, we can think about the place we are living in. It isn't always happy or sad, angry or fearful. It usually is a mosaic of the feelings we have about our lives. Minutes become days and moments become memories. Life is a combination of such things. Walking freely with the wind with those who have chosen to encountered life's beauty with me alongside. I've found that in walking, conversation becomes more fluid as it incorporates the passage and change of time and life everywhere.

Laughter from the heart comes from the places we realize and know. As we understand our shared, collective experience as people, we live. Gathered together we can hold hands, for none of us has experienced what another has, but each of us may be listened to and cared for and in turn be a light of hope that beats together if we take the risk to step beyond our grudges and listen. Barefoot we feel what is shaping us, changing us. Barefoot we arise and walk over to the beginning of the next moment. May it be the wonder that makes us cry with hope that together we can build something for the future of our lives and those we love. So it may be these feelings that hold us to the moment to create, shape, learn, live.

A Path For the Heart

The road less traveled is often quoted when one is proud of the unique path they have chosen. To blaze a trail or follow the way with less footprints often gives us a journey with a more complex landscape. If life were a musical composition, we could either follow the melody line or expand on what is simple and elaborate on the tones and tempos as the music notes rise and fall. This is more than taking a short cut to make something easier, this is taking a path from what opens our lives to creativity, connection, and challenge that helps us live a little bit more and understand that sometimes it is the path to hearing our hearts and our  history.

We often have to take a detour from the path we were taking because life is always under construction. The detour can also be our choice as Robert Frost's poem explains. When we take off our shoes and creep forward towards the frontiers of our comfort levels, we become pioneers discovering how surprisingly beautiful a life can be lived when it isn't always planned out. To some this might be wanderlust, others improvisation, and without both we cannot chart new waters in our lives.

Improvisation. As a part of art or comedy or music, I think part of it comes from an inner restlessness that comes from being tired of the same old routines or in other words, boredom. Another part probably comes from the reaches of the human spirit - exhaustion, terror, rage, inspiration, speechless experiences that can only be evoked through the stirrings of the soul that come out in art. It seems to be the way of creativity, the way of reaching into the rhythm of one's body or one's community and moving forward in response to these pulls that guide us down our own road less traveled.

Sometimes interruptions create these forks in the road that give us the choice of how fast our lives are going. Life always looks like it's going fast when looking through the photo album and through the rear view mirror, but that's because we're seeing all that has happened all at once rather than over the time it took for us to experience these things. I'm not saying we have to blow all over the place like a balloon in the wind, but I'm thinking that if we release some of our routine to our senses, our surroundings and feel our soul take hold, we can begin to find the beating drum of our heartbeat. With that we can possibly realize the human possibility where peace and harmony based on each of our souls, pieces of the diverse puzzle of humanity can be real as the riffs we play from our lives.

balloon in the wind

fun with photography

your own path by water

or land

Where You're Going

"People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know" Amelia - Joni Mitchell 


During this summer, I have been setting my alarm for the mornings where I may oversleep and miss an appointment or scheduled event in my life that happens in the morning, but I have found myself waking up without the alarm even earlier than I set the ring to go off. The morning has often been the beginning of my day, the challenge I have to create the canvas of my life as I direct it and walk on.  A time to hear the ocean-like sound of cars on the expressway. A time to feel life slowly so it doesn't have to slip away so fast. A time to see the day as our life where we live and change as the cycles of morning and evening come. 


Even when we have appointments, we have the time we choose to do something with.  For those of you reading my blog for the first time, this post will be an invitation. I invite you to look at my other posts and think about those transcendent moments you choose to create or those that have just happened. How life doesn't have to be routine, it can be what makes your life matter to you. If you have read this before, I would like you to consider sharing what this thinking has made you think of, or experiences where barefoot life or life lived beyond the realm of measured time where we feel life's wonder and beauty in the comment space below.  


For you, I could be one of those people who may tell you where I've been, or recommend what to do and feel and experience. Yet, I can't live your life, create your beauty. I can only hope to inspire it with what inspires mine. That's why Joni Mitchell's song lyric is so significant to me. It reminds us that we can go anywhere in our hearts, in our lives, in anyway we can at the moment and see what that does to our lives. 


Day breaks, night falls, the cycles begin to look mundane, until we stop and see what made today real to us. Stop and think what changed us, who made us laugh, who we talked with, where we were. 


This is life barefoot. I hope you consider sharing what experiences mean something to you. I hope this will inspire a conversation of inspired experiences and life's awe and wonder. Also, if you have any questions about what I mean in my writing, comments about where I could be more clear, or any other thought that may not be addressed, feel free to ask and I'll respond as soon as I can. 

Along the trail to the summit of Mt. Marcy

Ferris Wheel

These photos were taken and show some of these moments where I feel life is barefoot, though I am often not barefoot when experiencing these things for safety reasons!

Smiles That Change the World

"I say why all the loneliness and why all the fear,  if it's up to me there'll be none of that here."
Joe Crookston

A smile offers a little bit of sunshine that is not only lasting, it can very often begin or create a connection that can spread to all of us. When words cannot be found for appreciation, comfort, delight, pleasure, excitement, and often hope, a smile can be the expression of our feelings for such moments. It is in gladness the present becomes real, and the present becomes our life forming experience that changes our lives; often for the better. Like a birdsong evokes the first breath of dawn, a smile can be that instant where darkness starts to fade into the light.

It is this mystery that cannot be held, even for a moment. Like water running through our hands, we have the moment to create something that is for the moment. Smiles offer a consoling, knowing welcome, an agreement in unison, or a sign that the fearful have seen a light at the end of the tunnel. Even when despair lingers and confusion swirls into our minds or causes chaos in our lives, a smile is that breath of fresh air that becomes understanding. Understanding that there is more than all this sorrow, loneliness and fear.

Joe Crookston sings from his soul, evoking his desire to leave a better world for the generations that will inherit what we leave behind. He doesn't want what he has seen others or maybe even himself face. That's why he sings and asks why we have all the anger and greed that are the seeds of war and poverty. The injustice that tear us apart rather than bring us together can begun to be reconciled with a smile, with a seed of hope from a hand of welcome and embrace.

Yesterday in becoming better acquainted with one of my neighbors, I felt his warmth not from his words, but from the combination of words of friendship and the gentleness of his smile. Once affected by a smile, we are never the same, we feel it in the roots of our heart as we know our lives matter that we too can take the smile we received, and offer it to another as night becomes day and the moment becomes ours briefly to create a way of healing out of this fear and into jubilation and peace.

The sunlight of dawn reflecting off the water as its light spreads everywhere; like a smile spreads hope.

Outstretched Hands

What we touch often with our hands, we feel, and what we feel gives us our experiences of life. We open our hands to embrace our neighbor who is grieving or our family who is celebrating. We extend a hand of welcome to the stranger who seems out of place. We create and build our lives with our hands. Most of all, our hands are often our connection to the surface and depth beyond what we directly sense immediately.

When we cannot walk barefoot, or do not want to, we sense our touch with the way we use our hands and if we do not have the use of our hands, we compensate with how we hold onto what we need. Our hands can create or destroy and the choice is ours in understanding which we will do. Hands are often a symbol for community when they hold an outstretched hand of another person in their midst or for building community through our relationships and our work to make the world a more livable place.  The dance of life is led and followed as it ebbs and flows through the nights and days we form and create in beauty and wonder.

I was inspired to write this post by what I saw in a compassionate action that could not have been done if we did not value the role our hands have in shaping life. In caring for another person in a more difficult place in life, a friend was able to provide dignity and a sense of cleanliness and beauty to a woman who needed a bath. While doing this, she soothed this woman's skin and provided love and care with gentleness and patience that transformed life for both women. This act in hospice care is simple, yet very important to giving and providing life-filled moments. We can beautify our world by holding our hurting sisters and brothers, picking flowers and brightening a dark day, welcoming a new friend into our midst, tell a story that will change lives, and shape our days one minute at a time as our hands direct the path we choose to live.

Flowers picked to fill the room with color.

A Time To Plant

As the rain fell today, I thought of the trees I helped plant in Hamlin Beach State Park on Saturday during a statewide event held for New York State Parks called I Love My Park Day. As an initiative to improve the air quality of our planet, the park leadership has worked to plan trees in an area of the park that would become a small forest if the young saplings don't become food for the deer first.

Trees are the lungs of our planet as they regulate the gas exchange in the atmosphere surrounding Earth and provide us much of the oxygen that we need to live vibrant lives. In planting some fifteen to twenty young trees, I began to feel connected. I often feel connected to life when I give of myself to others, but when giving of myself to the planet I felt myself look up to the sky and down to the ground beneath my feet. I was becoming part of more than humanity, I was becoming alive amongst everything that lives.  This was different than paying attention to cows when helping them go through a routine milking. This was giving life to something new that had the potential to change the lives of many animals and people.

In a rural setting along Lake Ontario, trees are homes to animals and closer to the water they protect the land. In planting trees,  I had moments of connection with the land. It had been wet and muddy from recent rains making the planting a messy, yet enriching process. The clean soil surrounding roots that would take in this water showed me the base of life for these young plants much the way we can form connections with those who we have lived and grown with as they form our base and help us know or core or heart.

Planting ourselves in life is a hard process in a world moving frequently with little space for rest. Sometimes to survive we have to plant things in our hearts and our souls if we want to be deeply rooted in life while accepting the flux of movement of the human race. The trees of love, hope, peace, charity, and empowerment can be nurtured by our actions as people are lifted to hold each other as one family. I will write more about experiences that can only be felt by the heart and by the soul of life as the things cannot be felt by the mind once they begin growing in our lives in future posts. It is my hope we can nurture the soil of our lives through our work with what we can bring to life.

Trees growing in the rain. (Note: This is not Hamlin Beach State Park)

Letting Life Bloom

Along the roadside of the expressway today, I saw a garden planted by nature. I was driving slowly and carefully so I could take in the plants that became the landscape around me. A rain had just fallen and left the surfaces of nature fresh with a new moment to help life continue to thrive. In this garden daffodils had bloomed from their stems in a way that show nature untamed by human hands, yet aesthetic and formed to experience life now.

Flowers bloom and color our landscapes and the skies become filled with hues that shine in the sunlight and brighten a darkened day. Their color in the landscapes we live in becomes a sure sign of peace and harmony when planted. In springtime, the aromas bring birds and a slower pace that can slow  down the rush of life. It's as though flowers become our other connection to the earth, because along with animals, their presence becomes part of our own transience.

A flower can touch a life in a way a smile can. They are temporary, but their impact is lasting in the hearts and memories of those receiving simple beauty. A way of touching the heart that a melody of new beginnings and hope can burst forth from the wintry depths of fear and darkness. Overnight, flowers bloom, life changes, and can be given and received as growth continues from within to the path we walk along with others and with ourselves. The flower becomes the color we add to life, when we choose to, and the life that we give when we take a chance and bring something wonderful to life in the present.

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.

Growing Up Together

As a kid, it felt like growing up would always take forever, and then once I became a grown up, life never seemed to stop moving faster. When I look at kids playing, laughing, stumbling, and being themselves, I see how precious they are. They have eyes that are full of wonder and awe, and it is the curiosity birthed with questions and open discovery that gives them their unique perspective on life. It seems that this perspective comes from an opportunity founded upon what we give them.

We can give the young people in our life hope by teaching them their importance by listening them We can teach them how to be alive by paying attention to them and then by living fully with them as they grow with us in life. Thus, kids have the unique opportunity to show us the gift of time. Time can be transcendent or it can be stagnant depending on what we do with it. Sometimes the only thing we can do with the time we are given is to understand that it is temporary, but a gift just the same.

Life's beautiful moments can happen as we live with those around us, especially those who will be on this planet after us. We can help them see what makes life worth living if we let ourselves see that it is worth it for ourselves, too. Are adults much different other than what we have already learned about what happens from day to day? Aren't we still the unique persons we were when we first saw the bright lights and stepped into life? Maybe then we can see life with others as all of life.

In hearing children singing together, I hear how young we all once were, and I hear the connection we have to one another. I hear the individual hearts that can work together to accomplish something great, and the hearts that can shape the world with their unique passions and dreams. Dreams, like children must be nurtured and cultivated with the realization that they can be squandered by fear, despair, and loss, although with assistance, we can see how these bring us closer to understanding what we want to accomplish in dreams -- while in children, they are signs that we can help them live and grow greater than the plights that can seem to threaten their futures. We can all learn from children as they grow and change faster than moments seem to contain. Memories are made, dreams are nurtured, and children are grown, and if we reach out to the child who needs us, we can touch their world, and ultimately our own and live beyond the confines of our own reality.

Three things I think everyone, especially children, need to thrive. Love, colorful surroundings, and nature.

Every Person Is A Gift

This could also be phrased, every life is a gift, though a person becomes who they are by living their life. It's hard to imagine a world with seven billion people, seven billion lives and so many more that have lived on this giant blue planet. It is impossible to meet every person who is alive during one's lifetime, but it is possible to meet people who will change us, even if we meet them once and never see them or hear their voice speak to us again. When we see how people touch us, we can see how they gave us a new perspective, bring us together, allow us to smile, take time to be there, teach us something or show us part of life we had never seen, we can see what that person means not only to us, but to life itself.

Behind everything we enjoy is a person who helped form a song, a meal, a memory, a hope, or our very existence. There was a person who you didn't know that well who smiled at you. There was a friend who challenged you to do something you didn't know you could do until you did it, and then you realized how much it changed your life. All it takes is one person to realize how life changing another life is. We each have a wealth of experience from different places, different people, and different perspectives. Currently we have over seven billion of these to teach us, laugh with us, move us, and be a part of our lives.

While there are people who have hurt us, betrayed our trust, and threatened our sense of who we are that may not seem like a gift, they have things to teach us about adversity, reconciliation, and strength to overcome and rise above. For the challenges in life have been said to be there for a reason, they ultimately take us to who we will become, and who we need to be for tomorrow.

It is said that life is short, but it can be extended if we live moment by moment aware and mindful of just how exceptional life is. There are plenty of hardships that can make us appreciative of what we have, and show us how we need each other. Even the strangers in our life can offer pieces of existence forming the garden of life. It's hard to imagine, but many times in our lives, we are strangers to many people, and by giving others the benefit of the doubt in conversations we may have only one with them, we may receive something similar in return. Call it karma, what goes around comes around, or kindness, the person you meet briefly tomorrow can be a gift if you let them show you what life is going to be at that time.

  Standing in the water at Jones Beach State Park. 

Sitting in a park along the Genesee River.

The people in the photos above are people I never met, and may never see again. They may or may not have been a gift to me, but I'm sure they are to other people.

A Sunrise Across the Fields

This morning I woke up much earlier than usual to help my uncle milk his friend's cows. As I walked out of the house, I saw the moonlight reflecting off the fresh snow that only showed me the delicacy of the morning. It wasn't very difficult to get out of bed and walk the short distance to my uncle's house by the light of the moon guiding my way. As we drove over to his friends, I continued to take in the slow, quieter pace of the hours just before dawn.

Dairy farms (and I suppose many farms) have a certain culture about them that are about the animals and crops that regulate the schedules outside of human control. They seem to have a slower, but steadier pace that isn't interrupted by various deadlines or affected by high stress conditions. The heifers come into the milking parlor to be milked before going out to the pasture or stalls to eat or rest, give birth, and raise their young. Most of the time, it's easy come, easy go unless one of the cows gets spooked. Farms also have a particular smell that is unmistakable. While I would most certainly avoid walking barefoot through the manure or the fields, I find that I am limited to living and being aware of my senses in nature because if I look to what's next, I'll miss what I have to do or live through right now.

By being present with the cows as I dipped their teats in disinfectant or cleaned their udders so they could be milked, I could pay attention to each individual cow and be alert if one would try and kick me if  she did not want to be milked. It was an opportunity to see what would happen if I let an animal show me what needed to be done, and how to be with them quietly. It ended up leading to moments of peace and appreciation for nature and its pace that we are all apart of. Its natural pace reveals how connected we are to animals, plants, and all of life and how that helps provide me with balance.

Mornings are more special to me than the evenings as I find sunrises to be more peaceful and calming because many people are asleep or are enjoying the quiet while evenings are usually more boisterous and lively.  After the milking, I watched the sun rise into the sky casting a glow over the fields around the farm. To be connected to the land, and to feel how small I am in relation to everything is inspiring just as I realize that I have a role that is part of the synergy of life. In the morning, a new day begins. Cows need  to be milked, life begins after evening's slumber, and the sunrise brings us all together for another day together with all of life.

In the fields just after sunrise.

Water Reaching The Depths

Water flows along brooks and rests in tarns in mountains that reach into the sky. Its captivating power has a way of connecting with us, perhaps because so much of our bodies contain this mysterious substance. As I listen to water flowing or pattering on the fly of a tent, it amazes me how the natural sound reaches me where I need to be soothed, and allows me to reflect on the movement of life and the wideness of this planet. 

In many ways, folk melodies strummed from a guitar, mandolin, banjo, or plucked from a fiddle have a remarkably similar effect on me. As the melodies join the harmonies of a vocalist singing from the raw, evocative roots that touch the heart, and reverberate within the soul with memory and melancholy. Such music can move me to tears either from sadness or from recollection, and even profound joy linking the waters of life to the mellow richness of a folk guitarist singing to the cultures and to the bowels of the earth. 

These melodies and waters form a well for our spirit to be reached, and maybe shared. In this well, the depths of our dreams, our histories, our relationships can be drawn and bring us together or more in touch with ourselves. Why are we drawn to waterfalls, rapids, and crashing waves? The fast movement of water is like the fast movement of life and cannot be slowed, but can be savored and experienced with it's full force and blast of emotion and heart that makes us feel alive. As the melodies reach us, and inspire us, we can form them to mean what they will for our lives. From splashing in puddles and laughing as we dive deeper into the salty waters of the ocean discovering the soul of the earth to rising again as we grow more aware of what this life brings by wading in and embracing what is there. 

Niagara Falls - Summer 2010 

Why Barefoot?

Before I get very far in describing those moments that make me realize that this is life, in moments and instances of indescribable wonder, I want to go into depth in explaining what I mean by "life barefoot."

By being barefoot, it is possible to experience more because you aren't feeling just the air against your arms or face, but the ground beneath your feet. Once barefoot, it is easier to be sensitive to what you hear or smell. Then you can realize that you might be able to see things more vividly and taste the complexities in food if you happen to be munching on something. Whenever I go barefoot, somehow I notice more, however that does not mean I have to be without shoes or socks constantly to live this way.

Life barefoot is a reality and a metaphor for experiencing the senses of life that create the experiences and moments that are full of beauty and amazement that make one feel their soul or know they've stepped into something utterly beyond words - yet this is what I want to try to do. As described in my first post, I want to put words to these feelings and times that have become a memory or a moment that just took you and made you realize that this is what life is all about. That this is not about what could be, but it is about what is, and what you find to be increase your capacity for stepping into the beauty that surprises you.

This is a way of being inspired, for the life you have is yours. Seize it, and find the opportunity to live in it and to live barefoot. 

What Is This For Anyway?

There is so much wonder to be discovered in life, and it is best experienced from the soul in the present moment. It often happens without us looking for it or knowing where it will be. I want to document such moments, and explore their potential in the colorful tapestry that is shaped by sounds and textures, lights and voids, as well as voices and silences. 


It can be the minute when the light atop a lighthouse hits the water reflecting off it and into the beyond or walking barefoot along the summit of bedrock on a mountain in the alpine zone and it can be reading a book on a porch in the rain. While the experience cannot be fully felt from this blog, it can be here to resonate with someone's soul so that they may feel that the depth of life includes them amongst everything in this universe. 


That being said, this blog is for those who journey and traverse feeling alive in the simple and profound moments that create a life. This way life can be lived and shared as it is being felt and pushed forward. It is feeling the ground beneath our feet as we're running, dancing, sitting, climbing, strolling, breathing...