Happy Birthday, C. Little - One Year today...



It's been a year since I started this weblog on 3/15/2003.
The war drums were beating and everything was vibrating.
I couldn't see the future which was opening before me -- shock
and awe, the loss of dear friends, my father's passing, the sale
and emptying of our family home after 20 years, many more subtle
and significant events and changes to contemplate.

I'm glad I did this, and I am grateful to all those who encouraged
me and C. Little to chronicle and claim the moments and the
messages in our swiftly flowing lives.

I started the blog with a poem by Mary Oliver, called Wage Peace
and a picture of Noah in his bath, playing. It seems appropriate to
post another Mary Oliver poem here now--this one sounds so much like
me, I wish I wrote it. Happy birthday, y'all....

Some Things, Say the Wise Ones

Some things, say the wise ones who know everything,
are not living. I say,
You live your life your way and leave me alone.

I have talked with the faint clouds in the sky when they
are afraid of being left behind; I have said, Hurry, hurry!
and they have said, Thank you, we are hurrying.

About cows, and starfish, and roses there is no
argument. They die, after all.

But water is a question, so many living things in it,
but what is it itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming

generosity, how can they write you out?

As I think this I am sitting on the sand beside
the harbor. I am holding in my hand
small pieces of granite, pyrite, schist.
Each one, just now, so thoroughly asleep.

--Mary Oliver from The New Yorker 3/8/04