Mindfullness and Mothering - illumination

 

Sometimes the carpets seem so old and stained and parched, yet other times the sunlight gleams upon them and footsteps dapple them with dancing and they speak of all that is warm and homely to me.

 

Sometimes there seems to be nothing but an endless mess of random objects on dusty surfaces, yet at other times these objects carry the weight of a sacredness, blessed by children's imaginary games or the telling of stories or the making of crafts as if through this they are bestowed a beating life of their own.

 

I suppose it all has to do with how things are seen and interpreted, and the inner dialogue we have with them.
This is what gives external things a value, it is how they interact with our spirit.

 

What is within mirrored without.



The inner dialogue I have with things is sometimes the first thing I am careful to be mindful of.

Instead of "How in the world am I going to clear all this up for the hundredth time today, and where do all these crumbs come from?"

I can say, let me do the next thing with a peaceful heart, these things are evidence of growing life not stagnant life, for life that lives moves, and for this I must be grateful!"



Here is a beautiful quote I found from a new book that I am reading...

"There was a feeling of a weight of light - pressing the damp out of the grass and pressing the small of sour old sap out of the boards on the porch floor and burdening even the trees a little as a late snow would do. It was the kind of light that rests on your shoulders the way a cat lies on your lap"
..." There's a shimmer on a child's hair, in the sunlight. There are rainbow colours in it, tiny, soft beams of just the same colours you can see in the dew sometimes. They're in the petals of flowers, and they're  on a child's skin."
..." the twinkling of an eye. That is the most wonderful expression. I've thought from time to time it was the best thing in life, that little incandescence you see in people when the charm of a thing strikes them, ot the humor of it. "The light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart."

Excerpt from "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson ... recommended by dear Tonia...