groundlessness

another pema chodrin quote I find so comforting...

what would help you feel better?

this is a slice of my "family mission" created for my women's group on the topic of motherhood.
Whenever there is a crisis with the little ones, I always try to remember to ask: what would help you feel better?
Hopefully, a little shift happens... a solution becomes the focus, instead of... the little sister who colored
on her big sister's latest unicorn picture.
It works, except when it doesn't... and she just needs to cry a little.
update: as with most of my tricks, it has stopped working. when I ask elke what would help her feel better, she answers, devastated: "nothing."
tate always answers chocolate cake or something to that effect.

she is unbridled by convention

my dear little sideways sandwich & pizza eater, naked beach wanderer, & own drum beat marcher,

how do I honor your choices and help you nourish yourself?

She is a funny, frizzy, wild, force of love! among many things...

Got this poem in the mail

My dear friend Rachel sent this poem in the mail for my 36th birthday

I taped it on the wall and want to read it every day.

I think typing poetry is even nicer than reading it.

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper. I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar from my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her ple forearmsand thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is/

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?