Even If the Whole World Seems Upset

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

“Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit.

Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever,

even if your whole world seems upset.”

Saint Francis de Sales

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

Nature photo of the week – branches at sunset:

Shadow of the Week – winter grass:

Speak Silence

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

“. . . Let thy west wind sleep on

The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,

And wash the dusk with silver. . . .”

– William Blake, “To the Evening Star” –

So much of nature speaks in silence, and it’s most often when we’re silent that we hear it.

Ours is a noisy world. Find time to settle into silence this week and listen to nature.

Nature photo of the week – moon in the branches:

Shadow of the Week:

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

Lover of Beauty

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

“I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty.”

Emerson, “Nature”

Look for beauty this week, even in places where you might not expect it.

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

Nature photo of the week – winter sky:

Shadow of the Week:

Roots and Branches

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

“The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.”

St. Augustine, City of God

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that I love trees. My favorite part is the tip-top, where the branches brush the sky. Last week I became curious about a tree “fact” and did a bit of research. I had heard that a tree’s roots spread down and out as far underground as their branches spread overhead. I pictured a kind of mirror image underground. I wondered if that was true. The answer: not really.

“It is not uncommon to find trees with root systems having an area with a diameter one, two, or more times the height of the tree” according to the Harvard arboretum site. Roots can grow down as far as 33 feet or more “when oxygen, water, and nutrients are available at these depths.”

“Roots grow where the resources of life are available.” (water, oxygen, minerals, support, warmth)

In extremely dry areas such as “those trees that manage to survive and grow in the area are characterized by a taproot system that plunges down . . . [sometimes even] 50 ft or more below the surface.”

“The deeper the roots the more drought resistant a tree is,” says an official Arbor Day blog.

I immediately thought about our own lives and how we’re always reaching and stretching, branch and root, to bring ourselves into balance, to find the nutrients our souls need not just to survive but to thrive. And, of course, that thought presented me with the thought of our lives drawing on whatever we sink our roots into. Souls starve when the resources of life are not available – or when the resources are available but we never plunge our taproots deep enough to access the spiritual water, oxygen, minerals, support, and warmth our souls need.

But life is not conducive to tapping into that depth. “Life in the twenty-first century is often rushed, clumsy, and frustrating, and it is this way because of what we do to one another, and to ourselves. We’re overloaded at work. We’re overwhelmed at home. We’re distracted and we let the door slam on the person behind us, we trip over curbs as we’re texting, we’re running late, we fail to notice,” writes Sarah L. Kaufman in The Art of Grace: On Moving Well Through Life.

We get busy and distracted, and we stay shallow. Or we’re too anxious – or even afraid – to sink our roots deep. It can be dark down there, maybe gritty or sludgy. Maybe the ground under us needs to be aerated or fertilized. Ah, enter the practice of pausing and stilling ourselves, breathing deeply, aerating. Instead of failing to notice, we pay attention to the moment, to what we see, smell, hear, taste, feel. So much of our anxiety comes from rehashing the past or pre-hashing the future. In contrast, most individual present moments offer us peace and at least some small bit of beauty and wonder. Settling into what is around us right now allows us to find that beauty, wonder, and peace.

Some people seem to carry a grace and calm within themselves, even when the “whole world seems upset.” I think that’s because they have sunk a taproot into a deep soul-source of calm, a strength they consistently draw on. Strong roots help a tree survive storms. Strong roots form the support system that frees branches to reach up and out and into the sky.

May you sink your roots deep into the soil of peace and lovingkindness.

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

Nature photo of the week – roots and moss:

Shadow of the Week – shadow and silhouette:

Steps on Silver Sod

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

“Black are my steps on silver sod;

Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;

And tree and house, and hill and lake,

Are frosted like a wedding cake.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson, “Wintertime” –

Each day is an open palm, offering gifts of the season. Catch its scent. Taste its flavors. Hear its song. Pay attention. Tomorrow’s gift will be different.

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

Nature photo of the week:

Shadows of the Week:

Winter’s Art

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

“. . . astonished Art

. . . the mad wind’s night-work,

The frolic architecture of the snow.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’ve been enjoying the architecture of the snow this week. But whether we have an abundance of snow or none at all, we open the door to calm when we pause to appreciate nature’s architecture. Breathe out distraction and tension. Breathe in calm and the gift of life.

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

Shadow of the Week:

Nature photo of the week:

One Kind Word

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

“One kind word can warm three winter months.”

Japanese proverb

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

Shadow of the Week – globe of a candle lamp:

Nature photo of the week – frost on ivy:

Winter Warm

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

“In the depth of winter

I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”

Albert Camus

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

Shadow of the Week:

Nature photo of the week:

To Sweep the Cobwebs Out of the Sky

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

There was an old woman tossed up in a basket,

Nineteen times as high as the moon;

And where she was going, I couldn’t but ask it,

For in her hand she carried a broom.

“Old woman, old woman, old woman,” said I,

“O whither, O whither, O whither so high?”

“To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.

And I’ll return, by and by.”

On New Year’s Day, I woke up with two lines from this Mother Goose poem running through my head: “Oh whither, O whither, O whither so high? To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.” I hadn’t thought of that poem in years. Strange that my new year should begin there. Or not. I’m somewhat of a mystic, so unusual events or thoughts nudge me into wondering if they might be significant and why.

As for the old woman: I qualify for the senior discount at Kroger, so yeah, that fits. It also means I’ve experienced life tossing me around a lot – nineteen times as high as the moon? Well, considering the fact that beyond the moon is pretty much unknown, uncharted territory, I’d have to say yes. I’m tossing about in uncharted uncertainties. (Of course, that’s nothing new for any of us, it’s just that we don’t often let ourselves dwell on the iffiness of the future.)

Then there’s the broom and the cobwebs, which really seem to be the crux of the matter. Being a wordsmith, I looked up the origin of broom and found it comes from Old High German bramo, meaning brambles. Brooms were originally twigs and brambles bound together to make a tool for sweeping. Sweep, too, comes from Old High German: swiefen means to wander. So the brambles wander this way and that, chasing away the dust – or cobwebs in the poem. Which brings us to cobweb, from Middle English coppe, meaning spider and Old English wefen, to weave. But Webster’s second definition is, I think, what I’m going for: “something that entangles, obscures, or confuses.”

The nursery rhyme experts William and Ceil Baring-Gould say that this rhyme was made up by detractors of Henry V of England to ridicule his march against France, which they thought was as likely to succeed as sweeping cobwebs from deep space. (When Henry won at Agincourt, they quickly changed the words, but the original rhyme was handed down in the nursery.) However the poem began, I’ve appropriated it for 2016 as I head into high, uncharted skies to sweep away whatever entangles, obscures, or confuses. Sounds pretty lofty (ahem). And what does this have to do with carrying the calm? We rely on the sacred place of peace within ourselves to keep us from panicking and to support our sense of adventure as we journey through uncharted territory.

So grab your broom. Breathe out the old, breathe in the new. In 2016, nourish peace, cultivate loving kindness, carry the calm, and enjoy the journey.

Shadow of the Week – a candle at my desk: