It’s been a stunning morning here.  Once again, the sky is full of stacks and clumps of clouds and the wind is strong and brazen.  My world is flickering in and out of light and shadow as the wind rearranges the sky — the elements are always toying with each other.  I woke up chilled and have been shivering at the kitchen island, sipping cups of coffee and tea while doing some writing.  When the furnace kicks in, it blows hot air directly up my pant legs.  It feels like heaven.  I’ve been reading from Anne Truitt’s Daybook again (and again and again), revisiting the pages I dog-eared over the summer months.  This morning I passed over her writings from August 12:

“Unless we are very, very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves.  This indifference can be, in its extreme, a form of murder and seems to me a rather common phenomenon.  We claim autonomy for ourselves and forget that in so doing we can fall into the tyranny of defining other people as we would like them to be.  By focusing on what we choose to acknowledge in them, we impose an insidious control on them.  I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openness that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be.  The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself.  The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.“

ZING!

Doesn’t that pass through your heart like an arrow made of white truth with flaming fletches?!!!  It does mine.  How often have I pinned someone in place and prevented them from being who they are?  Likewise, how often have others pinned me in place like a squirming butterfly on a white card, unable to rise into who I am?  Gosh!  We need to quit it!  Just quit it.

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Three other things:

1.  We have one pumpkin left.  I will turn it into soup.

2.  I will take the dogs walking in the sunshine and wind this afternoon.  There will be quadruped riots in the snow and cheatgrass.

3.  Do you ever feel yourself rising, like the first star at dusk?  If so, imagine how many people out there have cast a glittering wish at the broadness of your twinkling back.  You’re beautiful.  Because you are.  And because I say so.

xx