Yes please, do come in

I took this photo in Pozos, Mexico while on a workshop with Micheal DeMeng. The spread out town was sprinkled with ruins and run-down buildings. Often these buildings look neglected and abandoned from the outside, but if by chance, you happen to walk by when a person is opening up a door to the place they call home inside, you might catch a brief glimpse a garden paradise, hidden from the rest of the world, known only to the owner and selected family and friends that are permitted entrance. I felt at home in this place of tumbled down ruins, scattered in the vibrant desert countryside, sometimes almost hidden by new growth.

Yesterday I started reading 'Journal of a Solitude' by May Sarton, again, for the 3rd or fourth time in the 30 years since I read it for the first time, a gift to me from my sister. She said the book reminded her of me. When I read it, I feel it too. It's such a comfort to feel understood. it is one of my favorite books

Let me share a small portion with you, a small glimpse.

"The reasons for depression are not so interesting as the way one handles it, simply to stay alive. This morning I woke at four and lay awake for an hour or so in a bad state. It is raining again. I got up finally and went about the daily chores, waiting for the sense of doom to lift - and what did it was watering the house plants. Suddenly joy came back because I was fulfilling a simple need, a living one. Dusting never has this effect (and that may be why I am such a poor housekeeper!), but feeding the cats when they are hungry, giving Punch clean water, makes me suddenly feel calm and happy.

Whatever peace I know rest in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way. Maybe the gaiety of the Warner family, their wisdom, comes from this, that they work close to nature all the time. As simple as that? But it is not simple. Their life requires patient understanding, imagination, the power to endure constant adversity - the weather, for example! To go with, not against the elements, an inexhastible vitality summoned back each day to do the same tasks, to feed the animals, clean out barns and pens, keep that complex world alive."

My daily prayer is to remember and hold on to that.

I wish for you a day filled with beauty and mystery.