“Art cannot rival this pomp of purple and gold.”
– Emerson –
(But I try.)
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.
For my longer posts on the art of noticing, link here.
Text and photos © 2018 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence.”
– Thomas Hood, “Ode: Autumn” –
Pause a moment to stand with old Autumn. Listen to silence.
Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week – cast by a decoration on a glass table:
If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.
For my longer posts on the art of noticing, link here.
Text and photos © 2018 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“What is autumn? . . . A second spring, where every leaf is a flower.”
– Albert Camus, Le Malentendu –
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.
For my longer posts on the art of noticing, link here.
Text and photos © 2018 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“The warm, brooding days are full of life and thoughts of life to come,
ripening seeds with next summer in them
or a hundred summers.”
Brood has a double meaning. It means to ponder, to think deeply. It also means protecting and preparing as a hen does when she sits on her eggs or keeps her young under her wings. So the warm days of summer are for ripening fruit and “brooding” seeds. As autumn approaches, “warm, brooding days” can also be a time of thinking deeply about life.
So keep planting seeds of peace and kindness wherever you go. Brood over those seeds, for they are “full of life and thoughts of life to come.” They hold next summer in them. They hold a hundred summers. They hold the future.
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.
For my longer posts on the art of noticing, link here.
Text and photos © 2018 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“Give me the splendid silent sun,
with all his beams full-dazzling;
Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe
and red from the orchard;
Give me a field where the
unmow’d grass grows;
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape;
Give me fresh corn and wheat – give me
serene-moving animals, teaching content.”
– Walt Whitman –
“Rest and be thankful.”
– William Wordsworth –
Nurture peace, cultivate loving kindness, carry the calm, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!
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.
For my posts on life, faith, and the mystery we call God, link here.
Text and photos © 2017 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“To Autumn”
Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’erbrimmed their clammy cells.
– John Keats –
May you journey through autumn with your heart open wide to its bounty. Pay attention. Nurture peace, cultivate loving 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.
For my posts on life, faith, and the mystery we call God, link here.
Text and photos © 2017 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“I saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence.”
– Thomas Hood –
Pay deep attention. Listen to silence. Nurture peace, cultivate loving-kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week –autumn sun shining through coleus leaves:
Shadow of the Week:
If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.
For my posts on life, faith, and the mystery we call God, link here.
Text and photos © 2017 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
From Le Malentendu by Albert Camus –
Martha: What is autumn?
Jan: A second spring, where every leaf is a flower.
If autumn is beginning to display her colors in your part of the world, I hope you can pause for a moment to breathe deeply of her beauty as she quietly and steadily transforms into a second, and very rich, spring.
Pay deep attention. Nurture peace, cultivate loving-kindness, and carry the calm.
Nature of the week – signs of autumn found on my back deck:
Shadow of the Week – on my garden shoes:
If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.
For my posts on life, faith, and the mystery we call God, link here. http://karynhenley.com
Text and photos © 2017 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
“Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”
– John Muir, Our National Parks –
Calm seems to be in short supply these days. All the more reason to intentionally call time-out for yourself – two minutes, five minutes, thirty minutes, whatever you can manage. Slow down, don’t relive or prelive but simply live for a moment in the moment. Find a bit of nature to observe, listen to, smell, and touch. It may be as large as the sky and a path through the woods, or as small as a blade of grass, a fallen leaf, or a pebble cupped in the palm of your hand. Exhale the panicked ugliness that has seeped in from current events, and inhale nature’s faithful beauty. Exhale tension; inhale calm. Let the wind blow its freshness into you. Let your cares drop away “like the leaves of Autumn.”
Nourish peace, cultivate loving kindness, and carry the calm. We need you.
Nature of the week:
Shadow of the Week – found on a bench:
Text and photos © 2016 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved.
For my posts on coming of age in a community of faith, link here.