All Is As It Should Be......

The sun is up and shining through the branches, the light reaching all the way into the pooja room! What a magical moment! While the heat is sweltering, I am grateful for the 5.30 am rising and 9.30 pm setting sun. The dog days of summer seem long, but they are worth every sunshiny moment.

I am sitting in the backyard with my morning cup of coffee. It has rained and brought the temperatures down. The plants seem happier. The dogs are sitting close by, one on each side of the swing, watching what they watch, switching spots, getting distracted every minute. I look up and see my vegetable patch and find my painted cat staring back at me! He looks lovely there, watching over my plants, keeping the pesky pests away. Just yesterday, I noticed a few tomatoes!


I am reading Mary Oliver, and she is talking of snakes and slithering, having time and writing poems, and the poem that pauses the turning of the pages is "How would you live then?"

How Would You Live Then?

What if a hundred rose-breasted grosbeaks
flew in circles around your head? What if
the mockingbird came into the house with you and
became your advisor? What if
the bees filled your walls with honey and all
you needed to do was ask them and they would fill
the bowl? What if the brook slid downhill just
past your bedroom window so you could listen
to its slow prayers as you fell asleep? What if
the stars began to shout their names, or to run
this way and that way above the clouds? What if
you painted a picture of a tree, and the leaves
began to rustle, and a bird cheerfully sang
from its painted branches? What if you suddenly saw
that the silver of water was brighter than the silver
of money? What if you finally saw
that the sunflowers, turning toward the sun all day
and every day – who knows how, but they do it – were
more precious, more meaningful than gold?

I tear up, feeling grateful for the ability to enjoy the silver and the gold of nature. I close my eyes, imagining "the stars run this way and that way" and I am sure there is a smile on my face. I hear the bird songs all around me. I open my eyes and watch a bird or two hop across the branches, picking the cherries. The tree that was sprinkled with small balls of red all over now is back to being green in all its glory in just a couple of days, and more importantly, I am aware of the silence! Ah, the silence, the sound of silence, and I wonder where all those cicadas went? The cicadas that came out after 17 years of hibernation with their largest of groups and the loudest of sounds, just like that, they have disappeared, leaving behind the sound of silence, the sounds of birds, the sound of an occasional car whirring by, the sound of an occasional plane flying by, the sound of water gently falling!

Never mind the cicadas and their loud presence, the empty shells now on the ground, never mind the big heron that appears every year and empties my pond of all fish, never mind the stray cat that competes to get the same fish, never mind the sparrows that have made a nest in my dryer vent, never mind the cawing of that crow, the baby squirrel still at the same spot I had last seen at - all is as it should be!

 

I cannot thank you enough Viji aunty @iyerviji for taking the time to read and nominate as well. Have a good weekend.

 

Your nomination speaks volumes, so please don't feel bad about responses - though I would love to hear whatever is on your mind!

 

Dear Ri, @Rihana,

I don't know what to say - thank you! Your response is a snippet in itself. Thank you for such a wonderful response.

And that's all I am trying to say, and live that in this crazy world, all is as it should be. We have to find those moments and hang on to them. I am not sure how I would have done if I didn't have this luxury of pausing, identifying those moments when they present themselves! If my writing presented a visual, what else can I ask for?

As I hiked in the wilderness of Alaska, taking in all the views, it was always that little flower growing on top of an arid hill that made me smile - blooming where planted, offering a reason to smile. It is something I have tried to follow in life.

What's the purpose otherwise, tell me?

I wonder why you would give up on gardening - if you have employed someone and still enjoy the beauty of it, I understand. You know my backyard is a 'wild thing'. My neighbor right behind my house has a prim and proper yard and mine....well it has a mind of its own. What can I say? I have tried to bring some order, but the plants seem to tell me, hey stand back...we are just going to bloom ...where we want. So by August, I am mostly giving up to welcome the beauty and chaos of fall.

You make me smile! And please do write about them. Noticing, not fretting, allows me to see what is!

This reminds me of a snippet I had written oh! so long ago about 'nature of things' and the exact same topic as I sat waiting at a signal watching a squirrel on top of an electric line doing the same thing....run, pause, look around, run, pause, amusing me for those two minutes! So wonderful!

These days, I often get accused of being quietly happy, but then, all of us can be too if only we notice the small things that actually matter. As I write this, I am thinking of Richard Bach working on making a cloud disappear in Illusions....we all go around carrying that cloud on our heads, which can poof...disappear the moment we see something and make an effort to ...just pause!

Thank you, Ri! Your response adds value and makes me want to continue to write. Not sure I have it in me to stop though...I am already busy here, as you might have noticed.

 

Thank you, dear JS Ma'm @jayasala42
A response from you has always meant a lot to me! Grateful!

 

Indeed Satchi!

What other way to see god than in the good and the beautiful things of the world?