Every morning I throw out the apple cores or a little fruit into our yard. Every morning the blackbirds come, usually a recognisable male and female pair. Yesterday afternoon I walked out of the back door to tend to the garden and was delighted to see a new male black bird on the grass. With a spontaneous smile, pouring with love and adoration for the bird, I greeting him with "Hi sweetie! Have you come to see me?"

To my astonishment, as if my long lost buddy from afar, he immediately hopped towards me as we engaged in the most beautiful dialogue with chirps, tweets, smiles and joyous mumblings of an English sort! It lasted forever (or so it seemed) as we melted into one, soaring the through waves of love together. United in divine union we spoke a language transcending limitations of the tongue that flows through all things... until, of course my child dashed enthusiastically out the door at which point the bird and I were snapped back into focussed awareness and our feathered friend took flight.

In a confusing world it is moments like this when we rise through the veil and suddenly everything makes sense. It is experiencing oneness with nature, the birds, watching a playful otter, observing the magnificent elegance of a bird of prey, growing my veggies, laughing with my child, walking through the countryside with my partner, brushing my hands through a dancing meadow... it is these experiences that bring me an overwhelming sense of wealth and success that takes me straight to the core of who I truly am. I couldn't dream of anything more fulfilling here on Earth.

OK, enough musing for today

With Love
Trinity

St. Francis And The Sow

The bud stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Galway Kinnell