Discovery
(From Within My Illusions &
Artwise Poetry Roulette Cards)
Let's be as children,
Eager to discover things
We already knew.
I've been considering a question lately: What contributes to my flourishing? I think of flourishing as a feeling of aliveness, a sense of vitality, hope, and awe, which is often accompanied by childlike wonder. This week, four moments stand out.
🌅🌙🪐
Wednesday night, I stepped outside just as the sun was setting and witnessed Venus and Jupiter sparkling alongside the waxing crescent moon (pictured above). Since then, I've been following Venus and Jupiter's movements on EarthSky and am excited to see their conjunction on March 1!
✍🏼✨👩🏽❤️👩🏽
My twelve-year-old daughter texted me one afternoon: You know yesterday when I wrote that poem?
Of course I remembered! (She was working on a poetry project for her language arts class.)
If I could do that every day, it would literally be a dream!!!"
Write poems? I asked. Be inspired?
Yes and yes! she responded.
🎨💭 🌳
I received a message this week from an art teacher at a Chicago public school whose eighth grade arts and civics club created a wisdom tree installation to leave behind as a legacy for the school. Last year, I had the chance to meet the students over Zoom and guide a meditation and writing practice to spark their imagination for the project. This week she sent me a photograph of the final installation. The tree, with its aquamarine background and rainbow-hued leaves of inspiration feels to me like an ocean of prayers and an upliftment for the world.
📖 💖 ⏳
I've been savoring a book of essays called Inciting Joy, by Ross Gay. Sometimes I read an essay in one sitting. Other times I linger on a paragraph or two, letting the words seep into the pores of my consciousness. I like to imagine that I'm in conversation with the book and its author. This week, I read in his essay on time and these few sentence felt like an answer to a question I didn't know how to ask.
"Poems are made of lines, which are actually breaths, and so the poem's rhythms, its time, is at the scale and pace and tempo of the body, the tempo of our bodies lit with our dying. And poems are communicated, ultimately, body to body, voice to ear, heart to heart. Even if those hearts are not next to one another in space or time. Poetry makes them so."
Thank you for taking a timeout with me, for being an ear for this voice across the ethers, and for your heart in this ongoing discovery of our aliveness. May what contributes to your flourishing incite joy for you and yours. With love, Jennifer