You can Lead Me to Water…

Posted on December 28, 2013 by kathryningrid

…but I can’t guarantee I’ll be smart or committed enough to take advantage of it. I may represent the truly average human in that, though it’s hardly cause for admiration or celebration. We’re just good at being too blind, stubborn, ignorant, lazy and foolish to make proper use of whatever riches are set in our way. It’s silly enough that I can sit at the brink of a well pouring out pure, cold, sweet water and die of thirst, but that I would fail to fill a cup for any of the other thirsty people waiting for my smallest effort becomes a much more significant omission. I should be better. I could be better.And I want to be better. The first step, surely, has got to be simply paying attention. Am I so accustomed to privilege that I have acquired wealth-blindness, forgetting how rich I am, or worse yet, have succumbed to that ugly disease, Entitlement? I must teach myself to renew my awe and wonder at what is good and great in my life. Then I must remember to make wise, generous, jubilant and extravagant use of it all. A whole new year lies ahead, a whole new series of opportunities for improvement. See you at the brink.

The Curvature of the Earth

Posted on November 29, 2013 by kathryningrid

You know, and I know, that if one can see far enough to and across the horizon, one can see the curvature of the earth. It’s also common knowledge that this is a perspective hard for the ordinary earthling to achieve.

What is perhaps a little less often considered is how difficult it can be to find and maintain the smaller perspective of the magical and beautiful in our world and our lives. I think I am fortunate both to realize how incredibly beyond-microscopic I am relative to the broad arc of my home planet and, oddly, how this same unfathomably huge place can hold me in the crook of its metaphorical arm, embracing me with such delicate kindness and comfort and generosity.When I think on this, I begin to see echoes of the vast rim of the third planet from the sun in smaller and smaller graces curving up right in the heart of the everyday.

Keeping Watch

Posted on April 25, 2013 by kathryningrid

Now that everyone seems to have the technology to make cheap watches (which I must designate in my heart mere instruments for marking time, not timepieces), I get to wondering whether the beauty of true clockworks will always be preserved or will only serve as curiosities and fodder for art. That precision we take so nonchalantly to be ours is a museum of measurement and the poetry of a mechanism we should keenly regret to lose if we value something more than the rigid math of time, the seamless meeting of Doing and Deadline.

Que Lindo Sueño (Life is but a Dream)

Posted on January 6, 2013 by kathryningrid

No matter what the language, no matter the land, if one is purposeful, hopeful, loving and a little bit lucky, life is full of dreamlike beauty. My recent wanderings on holiday reminded me of it in the larger sense of being with beloved people and going to marvelous places, having plenteous desirable free time (and deeply-loved sleep), delicious food, and delightful small adventures. I was also reminded of it in the more intimately tiny sense of prettiness all around me and well-being inside of me. So I give you a selection of small, visible tokens of those joys and remind you that whether you say it ‘Que Lindo Sueño‘ or you row your boat around singing that Life is but a dream, whether you’re in Russia or Morocco or Iceland or Texas, the astonishing and lovely is all around you for the looking, listening, tasting, and holding. Sometimes all it takes is to be aware; to pay attention. I wish you a year full of beauty!