WOW = Windows Open Wide

Posted by

“All the windows of my heart I open to the day.”

John Greenleaf Whittier

I love windows, all shapes and sizes. I love open windows when the day is mild and breezes drift in. I love sleeping by open windows, especially when insects serenade the darkness and distant trains call out on their journey through the night. I love to wake up to a view of dawn out the window, whether I find its light trickling down winter-bare branches or turning green leaves into morning gold.

myb'rmwindow

Then there are windows not-so-literal windows, open to our minds, our hearts, our souls: sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch – our senses. Yesterday, my family opened a window by listening to an episode of Fresh Air that explored the sounds birds make. It was amazing to hear these birds (one, a lyre bird mimicked the sound of a chain saw perfectly!). All we could say afterward was WOW.

Windows Open Wide. Windows Open to Wonder.

Open wide to wonder this week. Where do you find it?

Nourish peace, cultivate loving kindness, and carry the calm.

(And if you’re a mom, Happy Mother’s Day!)

Nature photo of the week – from my Wednesday Walk at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens:

YlIrisWtrfl

Shadow of the Week – morning coffee:

CupShdw

 

Text and photos © 2016 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.

Life Is . . .

Posted by

“Life is like a trumpet –

if you don’t put anything into it,

you don’t get anything out of it.”

W.C. Handy

 

The month of May brings graduations, Mother’s Day, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Memorial Day – occasions when we focus for a moment on life in the big-picture sense. Writers can often help us see that big picture. Here’s an array of thoughts from a variety of writers on what life is, ranging from the funny to the poignant to the thoughtfully wise. I hope you enjoy them.

“Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.” – Hans Christian Andersen

“Life is what happens to us when we are making other plans.” – Allen Saunders

“Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.” – Jean De La Bruyere

“Life is one long process of getting tired.” – Samuel Butler

“The first hundred years are the hardest.” – Wilson Mizner

Life is “a little gleam of time between two eternities.” – Thomas Carlyle

Life is “a B-picture script.” – Kirk Douglas

“Life is just a bowl of cherries.” – songwriter Lew Brown

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.” – Vladimir Nabokov

“Life is a gift, given in trust – like a child.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“Life is a lot like jazz . . . it’s best when you improvise.” – George Gershwin

“Our life is what our thoughts make it.” – Marcus Aurelius

“Life is like a play: it’s not the length but the excellence of the acting that matters.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.” – Josh Billings

“Life is not an exact science, it is an art.” – Samuel Butler

“Life is a zoo in a jungle.” – Peter De Vries

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” – Omar Khayyam

“Life’s a Great Balancing Act.” – Dr. Seuss

“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna’ get.” – Forrest Gump, fictional character created by Winston Groom

“Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.” – John Gardner

“Life is either a great adventure or nothing.” – Helen Keller

“Life is a creative, intimate and unpredictable conversation . . .” – David Whyte

 

Nourish peace, cultivate loving kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature photo of the week:

peony4.16

Shadow of the Week:

ShdwYucca

 

Text and photos © 2016 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.

A Soul Ajar

Posted by

“The soul should always

stand ajar, ready to

welcome the ecstatic

experience.”

– Emily Dickinson –

 

Leave your soul ajar this week. Watch. Listen. Hold on to what enriches you.

Nourish peace,

cultivate loving kindness,

and carry the calm.

 

Nature photo of the week– a tiny star-shaped bud, smaller than my pinkie nail, tracked indoors onto the carpet:

star:carpet

Shadow of the Week – made by the acanthus design of a window at the Frist Center of the Visual Arts:

ShdwFrist

Text and photos © 2016 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.

Chekhov’s 4 Qualities of Great Art

Posted by

“In any true, great piece of art you will always find four qualities which the artist has put into his creation,” said actor and director Michael Chekhov. He calls those qualities the “Four Brothers”: a feeling of Ease, a feeling of Form, a feeling of Beauty, and a feeling of the Whole.

I just spent the afternoon at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, which is itself a work of art, built in the early 1930’s inFrist1 classicism and Art Deco styles. Ease, Form, Beauty, Wholeness, the building fits Chekhov’s definition perfectly. The main gallery is currently exhibiting a collection from a noble family in Spain, the House of Alba, which includes paintings by artists like Titian, Goya, Velasquez, and Rubens. Many of the paintings are portraits from as early as the 15th century, and it’s interesting not only to see how the people dressed and wore their hair but also to notice what else they wanted in the painting. As one description of the exhibit points out, “[A] portrait declares his or her intellectual interests, social standing, and values. Crowns, gowns, hairstyles jewelry, military insignia, musical instruments and pets all give us insight into . . . how he or she wanted to be remembered.”

Because, really, it’s the person, not the painting who is the greater work of art. We who are roaming the galleries are the masterpieces. In fact, in one version of ancient scriptures, St. Paul says, “We are God’s masterpiece” or poiéma in ancient Greek, which technically means creation or workmanship but became the word for, yes, poetry or poem.

It just so happens that April is National Poetry Month – a perfect time to think of ourselves as living, breathing poems, as works of art. I suspect that’s why Chekhov’s “Four Brothers,” those feelings of great art, call to the deepest places in us. Great art resonates with the desire of our souls for ease, form, beauty, and wholeness.

Great art calls to the art that is you. You are the art, the poem, the masterpiece. As you meditate this week, breathe into that place of ease, feel and accept yourself in your own unique form and beauty, and open your spirit to the wholeness that is around you and within you.

Nourish peace, cultivate loving kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature photo of the week:

cardnl1

Shadow of the Week:

CkwdShdw3

Text and photos © 2016 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.

 

Far Away in the Sunshine

Far Away in the Sunshine

Posted by

“Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations.

I may not reach them,

but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them and try to follow where they lead.”

Louisa May Alcott

 

Follow your highest aspirations . . .

and nourish peace, cultivate loving kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature photo of the week – a fringed tulip – from my Wednesday Walk at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens:

FringeTulip

Shadow of the Week – I did not set this up but found it exactly like this on my deck after a windstorm. The shadows are few, but it’s appropriate for today. Happy Easter!

twigCross

Text and photos © 2016 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.

 

The World In Your Hand

The World In Your Hand

Posted by

Happy First Day of Spring!

“When you take a flower in your hand

and really look at it,

it’s your world for the moment.”

Georgia O’Keeffe

 

Nourish peace, cultivate loving kindness, and carry the calm.

 

Nature photo of the week – my world for a moment:

Ckwd3.9.16

Shadow of the Week – birdhouse on the deck:

BrdHsShdw

Text and photos © 2016 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.

The Spring-Turning Sun

Posted by

“And the sun felt warm upon his face like a hand with a lovely touch.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

 

May you feel the lovely touch of the Spring-turning sun this week.

 

Nourish peace,

cultivate loving kindness,

and carry the calm.

 

Nature photo of the week – sunrise through leaves that lasted the winter:

sunrisethruredlvs

Shadow of the Week – the sun paints a heart shadow on a silver-gray trunk:

HrtShdwTrunk

Text and photos © 2016 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.

Detritus: Close Encounters of the Small Kind

Posted by

I have a friend who sees beauty in the bits of nature that most of us pass by or trample over and sweep away – chips of dry fallen leaves, torn and faded petals, tiny feathers, bits of broken rock, mini-twigs – detritus. I can hear my friend saying detritus with a gleam of passion in her eyes, a love for the detail most of us never even notice. Detritus. She sees beauty in it and draws its intricate patterns slowly, carefully, lovingly with the sharpest pencil lead and the finest-tipped pen. She’s an artist.

A piece of detritus appeared in my kitchen window this week, hanging there like a small suncatcher. When I took a closer look, I saw that it was a leafy lacework more or less the shape of a star a quarter-inch wide. It had ragged, irregular outer edges and framed an open center, a circle evenly trisected by miniscule spokes that made the tiny object look like a star-framed peace symbol. An almost invisible spider-silk holds it in place, and it sways ever so slightly in the breeze. I got the sharpest pencil I could find and drew it. Then I let it be.

detritusSketch

Notice the tiny beauties this week. Draw them? Nourish peace, cultivate loving kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature photo of the week – detritus, the real thing:

Detritus

Shadow of the Week – indoor coffee plant, leaf-on-leaf shadows:

LfShdw1

Text and photos © 2016 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.