One More Circle (Peter Mayer)

Seriously, it's been six weeks since I last posted?  And the crazy thing is that I've had this one, completed, in the queue for all that time.  WTF?!?

Throwing it out into the blogiverse now, in hopes of getting myself back on track.  It's not even that I've been a sloth; the opposite, actually.  I am super-immersed in my gardening community, my family (especially my grandson Colin!), my friends, my Want to Read List/Pile, my walking/yoga/pool stretching, my Brain Games (NYT mini-crossword and Spelling Bee and now Wordle), my kitchen witchery (more about that later).  But I very much miss blogging, no matter if anyone's reading or not (but let me know if you are... 😍)

We wished each other Happy New Year, right?  Hope your 2022 is off to a great start on so many levels... 💖

NR:  By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah (awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021 "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents")

SONG:  One More Circle by Peter Mayer

BOOK:  Seeking Wisdom: A Spiritual Path to Creative Connection (A Six-Week Artist's Way Program) by Julia Cameron

POEM(S):  New Day's Lyric by Amanda Gorman

May this be the day
We come together.

Mourning, we come to mend,
Withered, we come to weather,
Torn, we come to tend,
Battered, we come to better.

Tethered by this year of yearning,
We are learning
That though we weren’t ready for this,
We have been readied by it.
We steadily vow that no matter
How we are weighed down,
We must always pave a way forward.
This hope is our door, our portal.
Even if we never get back to normal,
Someday we can venture beyond it,
To leave the known and take the first steps.

So let us not return to what was normal,
But reach toward what is next.
What was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat.

Come, look up with kindness yet,
For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.
We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,
But to take on tomorrow.

We heed this old spirit,
In a new day’s lyric,
In our hearts, we hear it:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
Be bold, sang Time this year,
Be bold, sang Time,
For when you honor yesterday,
Tomorrow ye will find.
Know what we’ve fought
Need not be forgot nor for none.
It defines us, binds us as one,
Come over, join this day just begun.
For wherever we come together,
We will forever overcome.

QUOTE(S): “Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.” ~ Maya Angelou

"We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of the world." ~ Jack Gilbert