Sunday Dinner: Acceptance

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“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.

Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow.

Let reality be reality.

Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

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Lao Tzu

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“For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining

is let it rain.”

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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“Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty.

It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to

embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides.

The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves

exactly as we are,

but never stop trying to learn and grow.”

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Tony Schwartz

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2016

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My happiness grows

in direct proportion to my acceptance,

and in inverse proportion to my expectations.”

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Michael J. Fox 

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For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Details

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WPC: Look Up! (An Evening on the River)

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“In the sky

there are always answers and explanations

for everything: every pain, every suffering,

joy and confusion.”

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Ishmael Beah

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“For this week’s challenge, take a moment to look up. Whether it’s the fan above your head at work, your bedroom ceiling, or the night sky, what do you see?

Is it familiar? Or does it show you a new perspective on your surroundings?” 

The Daily Post

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For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Look Up!

Photos by Woodland Gnome 2016

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These photos commemorate the spot where Edwin Alexander Tejada Delgado drowned on July 7, just before sunset, while swimming in the James River with his friends at this popular beach along the Colonial Parway near Jamestown Island. We didn’t know him, but we watch young people swimming, wading, fishing and boating from this beach nearly year round. 

We look up, to the sky here, exactly a day after his body was found.

May he rest in peace.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Beginning

A beginning is something of a mystery, for every beginning is born from something already there.  Beginnings can be counted back in an endless web of connections and interconnections to… what?  If we trace back far enough, what do we find?  What is the spark, the point of transition, of energy into matter at the beginning?   Which came first, the darkness, or the light?

And what is the spark which energizes each new beginning, moment to moment, in our lives?

“New Year,”  “New Garden,” “New relationship;” at what point does the remains of the old transition into the Genesis of the new? 

The points we choose, so often, are arbitrary; allowing us to compartmentalize our experience into neat piles.  We close one calendar and open another.  We open a packet and plant a seed.  We shake a hand and say, ” Hello.”

Taking a snapshot in time and labeling it, “The Beginning” asks us to disregard all that came before.  We are all deeply enmeshed in this recycled, recycling web of being.  

We gardeners, whose hands are never far from the Earth, exploit the neatness of the system as we grow alongside our gardens. 

We treasure the compost of our lives as the brilliant, energetic chaos which allows birth and sustenance of the new.

We watch seeds ripen from the faded flower; pull tiny bulbils from the base of  last year’s bulb; cut a branch, root it, and watch it grow into its own maturity.

We look into our children’s faces and see our own grandparents.

We see all life and living as ripples and waves;  light shining on an endless sea of possibility.

All Photos by Woodland Gnome 2014

Weekly Photo Challenge