Discernment...

and formation are both ::::SQUEEE!!!::: and ::aw, shit:::: all at the same time.

I feel like every time I start to make a judgment, or have an unkind thought, or start to add another task to my plate, or parenting, or really anything...I start again. And again, and again, until I feel at least almost right with it. It's exhilarating, and exhausting.

There are things you can't reach. But you can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in the goldfinches sing from the unreachable top of the tree.

I look; morning to night am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing aroun, but standing around
as though with your arms open.

And thinking: maybe something will come some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree --
they are all in this too.

And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.

At least, closer.

And cordially.

Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish;the unlooing snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold
fluttering around the corner of the sky

of God, the blue air.

-Mary Oliver

The goldfinches rise up from my mulberry trees when I go to the fairy circle in yard, swirling in a bright splash of yellow and away. That is God.