The Wild Reed

Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Farewell Minnesota Spring

I leave later today for my homeland of Australia. I’ll be gone for a month, and as it’s been over a year since I was last in my first home, I’m very much looking forward to reconnecting with family and friends.

It’s been on my mind that in leaving Minnesota at this time of year I will be missing the literal blossoming of spring – one of my favorite natural occurences of the year. But then just yesterday the pear tree in the backyard burst forth in all its color and fragrance. What a wonderful send-off!

In the past few weeks – I guess since Easter, really – I’ve been making the most of the numerous days of warm (sometimes unseasonably hot) weather we’ve been experiencing here in the Twin Cities. This includes bringing my wildebeest-of-a-bike out of the garden shed and onto the bike paths along the Mississippi River near my south Minneapolis home. I’ve even twice cycled over to my friends John and Noelle’s place in the Merriam Park neighborhood of St. Paul.

In bidding farewell (at least for a while) to my life here in the North Star State, I share this morning some photos I’ve taken these past few weeks of both the return of spring and how I’ve been enjoying this welcome return.

I’ll be adding commentary at a later date.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• A Season of Listening
• Let the Greening Begin
• New Spring Green
• Green Destiny
• Welcoming the Return of Spring
• Celebrating the “Color of Spring” and a Cosmic Notion of the Christ
• Spring: “Truly the Season for Joy and Hope”
• A Visiting Spring Breeze
• April Vignettes
• Spring Rain
• Spring Skies
• Spring . . . Within and Beyond (2022)
• Spring . . . Within and Beyond (2021)
• In the Footsteps of Spring: Introduction | Part I | II | III | IV | V

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

Monday, April 22, 2024

The Now

My “season of listening” continues.

As I’ve mentioned previously, one writer whose words I’m using as a guide throughout this season is Eckhart Tolle, who in his book Stillness Speaks, writes the following.

On the surface it seems that the present moment is only one of many, many moments. Each day of your life appears to consist of thousands of moments where different things happen. Yet if you look more deeply, is there not only one moment, ever? Is life ever not “this moment”?

This one moment – Now – is the only thing you can never escape from, the one constant factor in your life. No matter what happens, no matter how much your life changes, one thing is certain: it’s always Now.

Since there is no escape from the Now, why not welcome it, become friendly with it?

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When you make friends with the present moment, you feel at home no matter where you are. When you don’t feel at home in the Now, no matter where you go, you will carry unease with you.

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The present moment is as it is. Always. Can you let it be?

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The division of life into past, present, and future is mind-made and ultimately illusory. Past and future are thought forms, mental abstractions. The past can only be remembered Now. What you remember is an event that took place in the Now, and you remember it Now. The future, when it comes, is the Now. So the only thing that is real, the only thing there ever is is the Now.

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To have your attention in the Now is not a denial of what is needed in your life. It is recognizing what is primary. Then you can deal with what is secondary with great ease. It is not saying, “I’m not dealing with things anymore because there is only the Now.” No. Find what is primary first, and make the Now into your friend, not your enemy. Acknowledge it, honor it. When the Now is the foundation and primary focus of your life, then your life unfolds with ease.

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Putting away the dishes, drawing up a business strategy, planning a trip – what is more important: the doing or the result that you want to achieve through the doing? This moment or some future moment?

Do you treat this moment as if it were an obstacle to be overcome? Do you feel you have a future moment to get to that is more important?

Almost everyone lives like this most of the time. Since the future never arrives, except as the present, it is a dysfunctional way to live. It generates a constant undercurrent of unease, tension, and discontent. It does not honor life, which is Now and never not Now.

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Feel the aliveness within your body. That anchors you in the Now.