Ruminating On Rumi

As you start to walk out on the way, the way appears.

~ M. Rumi

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Fraser is 19!!

Well, what do you know!! 
Fraser is 19 today! 

From a curly haired cherub who told me that an alien rode around on his shoulder and was about three minutes tall to a zombie son, Fraser is the finest young man I know. 
I could gush over with pride and silly stories of his young days but words don’t come close to what we all love about him.   He’s genuine. He’s kind.
He’s loving.
And, bar none, he’s my favourite son. 


So on August 15, 2012, 19 years at 9:38 a.m., very close to the time I birthed him at my sister Shauna’s home in Surrey. There were about nineteen people to welcome him to the planet. The first we saw of him was his hand waving in the air as if to say, “I’m here.”  
We have the video!  

Happy, happy birthday my darling son!  You are a treasure that I will always hold close to my heart.  


Play safe!





Wednesday, August 1, 2012

The Buddha's Last Instruction by Mary Oliver


Friend,
I can not say how many times I have been absolutely gob-smacked, awe-struck with shivers down the spine and tingling present of this moment with the poems of Mary Oliver.  Yesterday, this poem floored me.  


The Buddha’s Last Instruction

“Make of yourself a light,”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal – a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire –
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(House of Light)