Vacation at Home – Part 4

 

Cultivating Gratefulness  - Learning How to See in the Springtime of the Soul

Field of Daffodils at the San Francisco Zoo

Purity of heart is learning to see clearly. 

John Main, Benedictine Monk

 

Cultivating gratefulness is a creative act.  I actually create something new when I am grateful.  I learn how to see. I focus and move into the depth of things.  There is so much life and beauty within a five mile radius of my home when I develop the consciousness of how to look.  I realized that I could start experimenting right at home.  What makes me feel hopeful, playful, spiritual and lighthearted?  What am I doing?  Who am I with?  What pulls me?  Do I have the courage to follow it?  

“Take a long, loving look at the real”.

Walter Burghardt, Jesuit theologian 

How can you make your own neighborhood interesting, no matter where you live?  Experiment with your intuition.  What do you see?  What engages you?  What does it feel like to be engaged?  How does it feel to be so present, you don’t want to be anywhere else?  What draws you deeper into your everyday world?  How can you discover the mystery and magic in the ordinary?   

One looks selectively and relishes the unexpected.

Henry James , “A Little Tour of France” 

My friend’s photography is not only a hobby, but a spiritual practice when she is fully aware of the world around her.  She has trained herself to notice, to really see the beauty in the mundane, the unexpected in the ordinary and the relationships between people, animals and the natural world.  Her photographs open up a whole new world within a world. 

Life is a wondrous journey. Romp in the kingdom! Get off the bank and frolic in the stream of goodness; that exquisite place of lightness and beauty. Go on vacation and stay there! 

The moment is to the minute as the atom is to the molecule – live gloriously in the very moment.

Me!

 

I wish you a joyous spring, new beginnings, re-creating and resurrection dear readers!