Just back from Slow Food's Terra Madre in Torino, after the Organic World Congress in Istanbul, after the GlobE in Witzenhausen, after the Tropentag in Prague... phew! ... All the work there is to do and all the inspiring people there are to do that work with!Tom, Roberto, and Jim said it best "It's a sad and beautiful world".
Helping to settle back into Kleve, I listened to Wes Nisker, a teacher at the Insight Meditation Center, open his talk with this poem 'Messenger' by Mary Oliver and wanted to share it again, even if you've read it a hundred times, enjoy it slowly and may it inspire gratitude as a central theme.
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My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam, deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium. The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth
and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, telling them all,
over and over, how it is that we live forever.
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The teacher repeated that line again for emphasis "over and over, how it is that we live forever"
