In this busy season and unbalanced world, a Celtic blessing of peace for you:
Deep peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the week:
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Text and photos © 2023 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
Today’s to-do list is long—
Clear the back deck of dried beans
and a drinking straw
left from yesterday when I taught
my grandson how to make
a pea shooter
Clean the upstairs bathroom
Vacuum
Bake bread
and whatever else comes up in between.
But my cat was on my lap,
curled and cozy
as if to say,
what’s the hurry,
this,
this,
this is what’s important.
And I noticed how brown strands of fur
mingled with gray,
how the white was growing whiter with age,
how her closed eyes smiled
and her breath gentled in and out.
I hushed the waiting tasks,
felt the warm sun on my shoulders,
listened to the quiet
for a moment
and a moment longer.
When I rose to tackle my to-do list,
my cat followed me upstairs
and sat in a splash of sun,
watching
as I calmly cleaned the bathroom
to a porcelain shine.
She was at peace.
And so was I.
– kh –
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week—Black-eyed Susans are still blooming:
Shadow of the week:
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Text and photos © 2023 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
Sometimes there are no words,
there’s only sitting in silence
and letting the tears come.
It feels massively important to lose
a father.
I’m left with roots running deep,
but the trellis is gone,
the one that held me up,
the one too often taken for granted.
There is now a breeze at my back
where the support used to be,
and I’m afraid I might fall,
but I am finding I’m strong enough
to stand
on my own,
and I realize that all these years
I have been strong.
And all these years,
he knew.
-kh-
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the week:
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Text and photos © 2023 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
As a writer, I’m always jotting down ideas, notes, and quotes that inspire and encourage me. This week, I ran across this quote that I had copied on July 1, 2020 from a blog I follow, Writer Unboxed (highly recommended for you writers). While the words may be directed toward writers, they apply to everyone. I needed this reminder this week. Maybe you do too.
“If you feel helpless in our troubled times, remember this: times change. Our world does not stay the same. It never does. If powerlessness is our premise, then change is our story’s promise. That is the message spoken by our voices. That is our strength. That is where our courage goes.” – agent and writer Donald Maass
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature and Shadow of the week – peace lily:
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Text and photos © 2023 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
This morning,
dawn quietly raised her window shade, releasing
a stream of gold that flowed
across reaching roofs and leaf-strewn lawns.
The brilliant stream wandered west,
a glowing, growing, widening river
warmly hugging the autumn garden.
Orange peppers blushed red,
purple pansies nodded,
black-eyed Susans brightened.
The river of sun dappled fallen pinecones,
speckled spent coneflowers,
splashed up tree trunks to spotlight the elms
and burnish yellowing poplar leaves.
I saw this golden gift of dawn
this morning
when she raised her window shade
and I raised mine.
-kh-
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
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Text and photos © 2023 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
Today I picked three palm-sized stars
with pure white petals.
Mandevilla they’re called,
a fancy name for a friendly flower that grows
on vines that twine around fence and stake
and the gangly stems of neighboring black-eyed Susans.
In the center of each bloom
is a deep throat of golden yellow,
as if they’ve swallowed sunshine.
They hold this inner glow of morning
through afternoon
and sunset
and twilight
and into the night.
Today I picked three palm-sized stars,
and they asked me what glowing ideas
I have swallowed.
Which are worth holding center-deep?
Which lead to peace and kindness
in this vining, entwining life?
Which will hold a warm glow within me
through sunset and twilight
and into the night?
I think I know the answer.
Only the golden grace of peace and lovingkindness
can last the day and pass through the night.
Today I picked three palm-sized stars
and, for a moment, held in my hand a hint of
nature’s wisdom.
-kh-
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.
Text and photos © 2023 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
You’re the strongest woman I know, she said.
But I do not feel it.
The truth is
I am not strong.
I simply put one foot in front of the other
and move forward,
rather slowly these days,
sometimes sure-footed,
but just as often stumbling.
No, I’m not strong.
I’m just here.
I’m simply present.
I shrug—I just am.
It’s said that when Moses asked God’s name,
God answered, “I am.”
Maybe that’s the strongest
anyone can be,
to simply exist
in spite of every wind that blows,
hot or cold,
gentle or fierce,
east, west, north, or south,
to take one more step
and say,
I am.
With all my quirks,
with all I know
and all I don’t know,
I am.
I just
am.
-kh-
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
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Text and photos © 2023 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
He’s being cranky again, my young grandson,
corralling me into a game of war
I do not want to play,
the swingset the villain’s lair.
I don’t like war, I tell him.
I don’t like fighting.
I like peace.
He says, “First you fight the monsters,
and then you go to your place of peace.”
I look up,
up to the treetops,
take a deep breath.
I don’t tell him that I have some experience
in fighting monsters who were not quite
as imaginary as his.
Or were they?
I also don’t tell him
that I don’t always win.
The treetops sway,
the breeze whispers peace.
I look back at my grandson.
“Okay,” I say.
“I will fight your monsters.”
And my heart breaks a little.
Because I know that I will.
-kh-
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
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Text and photos © 2023 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
In the drift of easing from night dreams
into the gift of a new dawn,
there exists a pause,
a delicious time,
a handful of moments,
the day reborn in peace.
This handful of half-waking minutes
is a carrier,
a courier,
an envoy of the sacred—
a sacrament.
In the fraying fog of waking,
I feel my fragile frame,
my trusting weight generously held,
graciously cradled,
between blanket and bed,
between heaven and earth.
This moment is a silver bowl
holding silent prayers
measured in heartbeats,
whispered in slow, easy breaths.
In a handful of half-awake minutes,
time touches eternity.
– kh –
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week:
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Text and photos © 2023 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
It’s the dance of the season,
the frolic of Fall.
Leaves
drift
down.
Pollen freckles the birdbath,
tickles my nose—
a snappy breeze,
an autumn sneeze.
Branches bow,
a leaf breaks loose.
Then another.
And another.
Lifted and swirled,
tossed and twirled,
they join the drift,
the sink and lift on
cool currents of air
that stir them around
and down
to the ground
to scuffle and settle.
All the while, the breeze whispers to leaves
still clinging to branches,
“Come and dance.
Come and dance.”
And they do,
and they will
until branches are bare
and a chill stirs the air.
Then Fall flicks her skirts
and flirts with Winter
who knows this dance well.
She’ll take the lead
flinging flakes of frost
in a waltz with the wind.
But that’s weeks away.
For today, it’s a breeze
and a sneeze
and a timid drift
of golden leaves.
– kh –
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week—moonrise:
Shadow of the Week:
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Text and photos © 2023 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.