Tell her to hold on. Tell her to hold on tight. Even through the darkest of night.
Sometimes
When we’re lost
We have to light our own candle
And find our way
Through the loneliest of places
Through the darkest of places
And when we’ve learnt from those places
Only then
Do we find our way
Back home to ourselves
Athey Thompson
(It’s time to block out harsh reality for a while and return to pretty pictures and words.)
You see
We are all
Nothing but Stars
Passing each other
In the night.
A Little Poem by Athey Thompson
Art by Tijana Lucovik
Mother’s Night (Mōdraniht) is an ancient Germanic/Anglo-Saxon tradition, celebrated on the eve of the Winter Solstice, marking the first night of Yule to honor ancestral mothers, female deities like Frigg, and the divine feminine, to focus on nurturing, protection, and rebirth. It’s a solemn yet festive night for remembrance, offerings, and connecting with life’s cycles, often involving candles, feasts, and rituals for the “Disir” (mother spirits).
The first thing that comes to my mind is to honor my very own Mother Spirit with some yummy chocolate, so I will!
Winter solstice —
the farthest touch
of dark.
The sun’s been
arching back,
breathing behind the clouds,
taking its time,
waiting
for you, too. –Tanya Markul
❄
Here are a few positive affirmations to greet this winter solstice:
❄ Embrace the Darkness – I welcome the darkness, for within it lies the seeds of new beginnings.
❄ Find Inner Light – I am a beacon of light, radiating warmth and positivity even in the coldest of times.
❄ Release and Renew – I release what no longer serves me, making space for growth and transformation.
❄ Connect with Nature – I am attuned to the rhythms of the Earth, finding harmony in its cycles.
❄ Cultivate Gratitude – I am grateful for the lessons of the past and the opportunities of the future.
Curated from rebeccadouglas.co.uk
This photo was taken at the beach on a spectacularly warm December afternoon. The sky was blue and the Pacific Ocean was full of sparkles; a magnificent day.
Ode To Our Ocean
The sea sings out to its many saviors:
Teenagers with fists thrust into the air at climate strikes,
Scientists converging around their data,
A child who stoops to scoop up a piece of trash.
The sea sings out for its singular subjects:
Arching whales that wave from their waves,
Turtles that teeter down their shining shores,
Coral reefs shining brightly as cities.
The sea sings out its suffering,
Knowing too much of waste, screeching sounds
And pernicious poison, its depths bruised by
Atrocities in the Atlantic,
Misery in the Mediterranean,
Its tides the preservers of time past.
The story of the ocean and the story of humanity
Are one and the same, a Great River that
Knows no borders and notes no lines,
Only ripples.
While we might call it the Seven Seas,
Today we sing out your true name:
The one ocean.
For no matter how we try to separate your waters,
You are the colossus that connects us.
Water makes up 70% of Earth,
70% of the human heart,
And 70% of the human being,
All of us, bodies of water,
For we, too are oceans,
Or at least beings bobbing in the same boat.
To stand up for for our ocean
Is to stand up for our own ship
The sea is a restless, strong collective of many pieces.
So are we.
The ocean can recover.
And so will we.
Let us not divide the tides,
But discover all they have to teach us–
Green meadows of sea grass that survive pathogens,
Blue-bloodied marine snails that can fight off viruses.
There are more lessons to learn,
Still more work to be done.
So we lift our faces to the sun.
May the seas help us see healing and hope,
May we sing out the ocean’s survival and revival.
Being the people of this blue planet is our most
Profound privilege and power,
For if we be the ocean’s saviors,
Then it is surely ours.
Written by Amanda Gorman for World Oceans Day. Harvard graduate Gorman is an American poet, activist, and model. Her work focuses on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora. Gorman was the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate.
This WordPress snow feature has always made my childsoul irrationally happy. For some reason, it was removed for a few years, but now it’s back, and it’s joyful!
I love snow…and it rhymes with crow!
Dust of Snow
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
Robert Frost
“Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny, I am looped in the loops of her hair.”
From Brown Penny by W.B. Yeats
…they opened their wings
softly and stepped
over every dark thing.
Mary Oliver
Sitting at the top of a tree near the lagoon, this lone egret seems deep in thought and as bewildered as I am about the time change; like why is it almost dark at 5pm?
Same, egret, same.
“Trade me a memory,” the butterfly said
A memory that’s heavy and harsh,
And I’ll sit and I’ll listen and try my sweet best
To lighten the load on your heart.
From a poem by Becky Hemsley+Art by Amanda Cass
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Lao Tzu
Leaf Loss / Bare Bones / Blue Sky
This ash tree started out forty years ago in a five-gallon pot as a housewarming gift. As soon as the leaves begin to drop–in just a day or two– the branches will become bare and I’ll have a LOT of raking to do.
“Simplicity is the final achievement.
Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.” Coco Chanel
Abscission is the reason why leaves fall. Scientists believe that a reduction in sunlight leads to the reduction of chlorophyll in the leaf due to a reduction in photosynthesis and this may trigger the abscission of leaves. The actual process occurs when the weaker cells near the petiole are pushed off by the stronger cells beneath them.
That’s a lot for my brain to process and right now all I want to do is quietly savor the stark, elegantly naked branches.
It reminds me of my little vase of twigs and another example of ma https://enchantedseashells.com/2020/10/25/ma-the-space-between-things
“Nature is pleased with simplicity.” Frederic Chopin:
As pretty as it is all dressed in green, the artistry of bare bone branches are stunning in their strength of simplicity,
I see the graceful arms of a dancer against a backdrop of the bluest sky of the year.
“I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasure.” Isaac Newton
Lately, I’ve been thinking about T-I-M-E. Time flies. I hate to be late; I like to be ON TIME. Does time really exist at all or have we been brainwashed to think iit does?
Too much thinking about time as ephemeral makes me anxious. Too much thinking about anything does the same thing. My non-logical mind has determined that TIME itself isn’t the issue; THINKING about it IS and it makes my brain melt, just like Dali’s clocks.
“Time doesn’t exist, clocks exist. Time is just an agreed upon construct.”
— David Foster Wallace
“It takes just one unattended moment for an hour to pass.”
― Sherod Santos, Square Inch Hours: Poems
Santos was born in South Carolina, graduated from San Diego State University, and studied at the University of California, Irvine. I never met him when I attended SDSU, but I knew ABOUT him; all of us who studied creative writing and poetry knew about “Rod” Santos and W.S. Merwin and Glover Davis, who was actually my professor.
David Foster Wallace was an acclaimed American writer known for his fiction, nonfiction, and critical essays that explored the complexities of consciousness, irony, and the human condition. Wallace wrote the novel Infinite Jest.
“The Persistence of Memory” is an iconic 1931 surrealist oil painting by Salvador Dalí, famous for its “melting” clocks draped over a desolate, dream-like landscape inspired by his Catalonian home. The painting uses a paranoiac-critical method to explore the subconscious, with the distorted clocks symbolizing the fluidity and subjectivity of time, influenced by Freudian psychology and potentially Einstein’s theory of relativity. From Google.
Could Leon Russell’s version of As Time Goes By be the best ever? I think so…mature Leon was awesome, too.
Enchanted Seashells | Princess Rosebud 