Dear Pachamama,
it’s unnerving when
you roil and rant,
rattling your saber –
An empty threat?
I feel Earth slide,
my life tenuous
beneath my feet.
Tornadoes & floods,
hail & hurricanes,
this earthquake
another reminder
that we live always
by your grace,
so better live now,
tomorrow’s uncertain.
© Susan L Hart 2023
How our souls yearn for spring, for the sweetness of it, the rebirth of green and the feeling that no matter how hard the winter was, we endured it. We are finally rewarded with the chance to start afresh…
Our dreams are renewed in spring; we feel like anything is possible. The vitality of life runs through our veins again, just as the sap flows in the trees.
My heart drifts back to sweet memories of spring, accompanying my dad to the sugar bush, snow still on the ground, but the sun promising the coming warmth of summer. And hauling a big tin of maple syrup home, feeling the abundance that the Earth had provided. Even as a kid I appreciated it, the sweetness of this simple annual ritual with my father.
Our backyard boasted both a cherry and an apple tree; one would flower pink, the other white. I loved walking way down to the end of the yard, simply to admire the beautiful blossoms and breathe in their intoxicating, delicate scent.
Much later in adulthood, I discovered travel stories of Japan, and now my soul yearns to visit a place where the cherry blossom is revered and celebrated. Some day I will, paying homage to girlhood memories, springtime, my father, and the beauty of life, which ideally we should celebrate every day.
But oh, how it feels easier to celebrate that beauty in springtime!
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ~ Albert Camus
© Susan L Hart 2023
“Take time to smell the flowers” is such a well-known phrase, I suppose it may be almost cliche. However, how many of us actually live it? Intentionally taking notice of life’s beauty is a regular habit we would all benefit from cultivating.
The beauty of life is all around us, all the time, but we are often too overwhelmed with our daily work and personal problems, or the ugliness in the news, to notice it.
Life is a precious gift. When we see the beauty and feel gratitude for it, we are essentially saying thank you for that gift. Gratitude is a great amplifier. That which we focus on expands and ripples outward.
Not only do we give ourselves a much needed healing elixir, but we raise our vibration and people around us feel it. Just one more seemingly small way (but it’s huge!) that we can heal the world around us.
The featured photo is one I took in Thailand. This little spirit house was tucked into the corner of a property near the road. I noticed it as I walked home one day, and luckily I had my camera with me. 🙂 It was a little bit of unexpected beauty…
“Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.” ~ Saul Bellow
More Inspirational Quotes:
“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.” ~ T.S. Eliot
“At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.” ~ Toni Morrison
“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” ~ Rumi
“You must give everything to make your life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in your imagination.” ~ Roman Payne
© Susan L Hart 2023
This post is an excerpt from my ebook Becoming Bigger: Realizations of Self & Humanity. Get it free when you subscribe for book news.
When we really tune into nature, we hook into the divine energy (whatever we each believe that to be) that breathes in all living things. We feel connected. Our souls transcend the mundane and we remember our infinite essence.
The divine is evident in the tiny dragonfly, but sometimes it takes a mighty mountain to awaken our souls. When we gaze upward at that magnificent rock face, we feel small and big, all at the same time.
The sublime grandeur within and without is undeniable. If such a thing exists in the world, then surely anything must be possible. And yes, it is.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” (Henry David Thoreau)
My post on Hart for Humanity today: Daydreaming our Joy back into existence.
© Susan L Hart 2023
“Walking in a winter wonderland…” Every year at Christmas time, this classic song has a way of making Northern Hemisphere dwellers slip into nostalgic myopia. After all, what could be more romantic than a fresh snowfall for the big holiday?
Being a hopeless romantic myself, when I began traveling I would still pine for snow during the holiday season. Hmm. The classic White Christmas. I miss it. Even in places that never have snow, a white Christmas seems to be the eternal dreamy ideal. I’ve seen fake snow sprayed on many a shop window around the equator, on both sides of the world. Yes, it’s the BIG DREAM.
The reality? I loved snow during my childhood winters. Skating, tobogganing, building ice forts, snow ball fights – winter was my favorite season. It was fun. As an adult, not so much!
Adults are the ones who shovel snow and scrape ice and commute bad roads to and from work, day after day after grueling miserable freezing day. Winter can surely be a grind. That’s why I feel deep empathy right now for my friends Up North. Much to their chagrin, the romance of Christmas feels already long gone, and they are faced with the reality of winter.
Oh yes, I will grant you there were days when a fresh powdery snow would cover the tree branches so magically, it would take my breath away. And all that horrible shoveling and winter driving would almost all seem worth it.
Almost. 🙂
© Susan L Hart 2023
Do you recognize and value your own special uniqueness? We live in a creative universe that is infinite and knows no bounds. Your extraordinary singularity is nothing less than a miracle of Life.
To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment”. In a society that touts conformity and wants to keep you small, the challenge is to objectively identify that which makes you unique, and then nurture and let it bloom, never allowing anyone to make you believe that it’s bad to be YOU.
We are all souls learning here on Earth, separate and yet also bound together as fractals of a greater whole. We each are imperfect (and yet perfect) in our varying stages of personal growth. Perspective, understanding, compassion, and kindness are higher spiritual attributes that go a long way towards helping each other on our individual paths of learning.
It is a common human condition to harbor fears that we are never quite acceptable. We are taught from a young age that conformity to certain standards will earn us society’s stamp of approval. That guarantees us the ultimate ego comfort zone, but at what cost?
Observe the current growing movement for social conformity to a single one-world ideology. If we agree to society’s demand that we think, do, and say the same as everyone else, what kind of lives are we living? Certainly they are not ones we could call our own. This could not be deemed expansive, either in terms of our personal soul growth, or the evolution of the collective we call humanity.
Therefore never let go of what is amazingly, astonishingly, exceptionally YOU. Embrace all of the wonderful attributes that make you a distinctive human being. Defend your right to think your own thoughts and speak your truth.
The world needs your inspired heart and spirit, your inner fire, perhaps more now than at any other time in history.
The above is a an excerpt from my ebook Becoming Bigger: Realizations of Self & Humanity.
As a footnote: Rapid and extreme changes are taking place in society right now. The big decision for humanity during this evolution of society is this: Where is the line between the unique individual, who has a soul, who came here to learn and build a life, and their responsibility to society? Is that individual part of society, or a piece of property of the society?
© Susan L Hart 2022
Hart Inspirations 