A Windy Day

Today I am having trouble writing about small blessings. My mind instead pays homage to the large blessings of a peaceful, safe, and abundant life, a warm home, healthy family, and faithful friends. I am thinking of the role of music in my life - Tim's treasured vocation and my joy in singing and playing my recorders. I am thinking of books and the passage of ideas and music and art down through the centuries. I am thinking of all the creative and nurturing people I know, the meeting of minds, and the delight in things that grow, and the pleasure of preparing and sharing food. The listing of large blessings goes on and on, in ever widening circles.

Yet the purpose of my writing is to celebrate the small blessings. In bringing myself back to the immediate, I hear the wind outside, rushing by in big breaths. It is no wonder the Renaissance artists showed the winds as cloudy faces with cheeks puffed out, lips pursed, blowing out air. Sometimes when I stand in the wind, I am reminded that air is not nothing. It is a substance with mass, although we do not see it. Birds flying in the air are not so different from fish swimming in the sea - we are the bottom dwellers of the sea of air, looking up and wishing we could fly. The trees seem to revel in the wind, unless it grows too strong and unseats their roots from the soil or breaks their branches. John Muir liked to climb high into the tops of redwoods. He wrote of riding out a storm in the top of a tall tree, clinging for his life, feeling it rock and sway, looking out over the waving treetops, exulting in wild nature.

It seems I am back out into the larger realm. Tomorrow I must write about something very small.