Mindful, The Beginning and the End

This is where I started with the Mindful daily practice a year ago. And here is where I will end this year of observing and posting each day. Thank you to all the people who have commented so positively over time about the posts and what they have meant to them. You helped me keep going. For 2018 I am going to try something new - probably a sketch a day or working on hand stitching. Still not quite sure but will begin soon!

Mindful 2017

I am going to try and respond each day to this moving poem by Mary Oliver as my daily practice for 2017.

Mindful –

Every Day I see and hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It is what I was born for – to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world – to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant- but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh good scholar, I day to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these- the untrimmable light of the world, the oceans shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?

Mindful, Day 362-363, The Never-ending Road

Having traveled in the car 4 out of the last 6 days, I about mesmerized myself watching the shadow of our car along the side of the road. It grew larger, smaller, taller, and wider depending on the roadside. And it seemed to move much faster then we were even though we were (at times) able to go 80 miles an hour. Funny how that didn't seem very fast at all in the wide open spaces!