color photograph

life’s passages … 51

winterblues

Memories are priceless…some are like hot chocolate and cozy socks on a chilly night.  Others, not so much … prickly needles.

This week as I watched videos of the winter storm in the Sierra Nevada memories of a particular winter in Iowa when the wind chill was reported to be 60 below zero visited for a moment or two. They were then replaced with memories of family photos of the winter  in Portola, California when the snow fall was recorded at 9 feet.

donna
Donna, Portola California

Even though January is my birth month, I often experience the winter blues in January as it is usually the longest, coldest, darkest month of the year.  Not so this year in Northeastern Colorado. “Snow,” I ask, “where are those new snow-making memories?”

life’s passages … 45

sunday morning with Thich Nhat Hanh

‘… the flower is made of non-flower elements. We can describe the flower as being full of everything. There is nothing that is not present in the flower. We see sunshine, we see the rain, we see clouds, we see the earth, and we also see time and space in the flower.


A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements. The whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest herself, The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity.


The flower cannot be by herself alone. The flower has to inter-be with the sunshine, the cloud and everything in the cosmos. If we understand being in terms of inter-being, then we are much closer to the truth. Inter-being is not being and it is not non-being. Inter-being means being empty of a separate identity, empty of a separate self.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life

Zepher Richard Lee