Initial Reading:

“What does it mean to rest in beauty?  It is a gentle reset button about what truly matters.   It’s not easy for so many, tempests carrying discomfort and pain, and our expectations in  disarray.  And yet, is it possible?  Maybe unexpected flowers inviting us and allowing for the sacrament of the present moment.  Even in the midst.”  Terry Hershey

“When you find yourself at an edge

Where the world is not quite one thing

Or another, you can always stop and listen.

Until you begin to hear all of it.

The whispers of water and sunlight

And the songs of wind or stone

In every living thing.

Listen until you remember. 

Nothing is just one thing, but only

The thing you see for a moment

From where you stand.”  Kai Skye

“Transforming our engagement with creation emerges from a deeply rooted contemplative practice where we come to know “the breathing together of all things.”  Teilhard de Chardin.

Reading chosen and read by Amy W.

A Moment to Bloom

On the trellis at the edge of the garden

a blush noisette rose, gently pink

invites me close

tiny crystals of dew poise on the backs of petals

on tops of leaves,

a bumblebee visits the center

curls and spins 

before it dizzies off.

I approach.

My eyes first fall in love, then my nose

nestles in the softness

that intimate perfume–

such delicate peace.

This, this lush bloom

near ones withered brown

and to buds about to enter

takes its turn, shares its stage

under the autumn sun.

Amy Webb,

October 29, 2021

Beyond the Appearance of Always

From where I stop, stand, 

nature’s panorama appears motionless, stock still.

I can’t tell if the chests of cypress heave with breath,

if the field of grass is taller than a week ago,

how much hyacinth multiplied in the pond,

whether fox squirrel has new gray hairs.

Change marches on, imperceptibly, true,

so much happening without my knowing

the ripples of growing and dying 

the infinite shifts and surrenders.

I don’t think to ask the ancient oaks

how they are today, how different from yesterday,

what it’s like to age.

They know, they know.

Autumn puts it out over loudspeakers today:

behind the façade of static

the blur of assuming an always

all living things breathe together

their begins middles and ends.

Amy Webb, October 29, 2021

Photos and poems by Amy W.

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• 

The Sacrament of the Present Moment

Filtered light through Spanish moss and green,

Shouts, sparkles, illuminates in this moment.

Swaying moss caresses the striated trunk,

Dances, tickles, swings in this moment.

Trickling water quenches the thirst of the brilliant green moss,

Drips, falls, sways in this moment.

The sacrament of this present moment and the next and the next.

The joy… the pain… the serenity… the turmoil…

It all belongs.

Photos and poem by Nancy L.