Everything is Beautiful

Happy New Year! I am wishing you the most beautiful and easy 2024. I’m sharing two pieces that I’m thinking about in this transition into the new year.

A reflection on 2023, from Mark Nepo’s poem “Adrift”:

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.

This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief.

The light spraying through the lace of the fern

is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web

around the knot in my throat.

The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch

as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost

in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh of the next stranger.

In the very center, under it all,

what we have that no one can take away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift,

feeling punctured by a holiness that exists inside everything.

I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

My wishes for 2024, courtesy of Sarah Roof:

slow down / schedule in rest / be grateful for the smallest of things / lose myself in the moment more often / belly laugh daily / say yes to simple adventures / put down the phone / let go of perfectionism/ go for small, sustainable growth / spend more days doing “nothing” / hold onto things lightly and people tightly / more earth under my feet & sunshine on my face / less time consuming, more time creating / embrace the beauty of living with the seasons - if the trees & bears need a season for rest, so do I