Today I’m Grateful for… January Blue

“Blue Skies, Smiling at Me…”

“You are the sky.
Everything else – it’s just the weather.”

~Pema Chodron 

Today is another January Blue kind of day…Anything is possible when the Sky is this blue!

But, why is the sky so blue?? Why not red or purple or green?  Am I the only one who wonders about this?  Apparently not. 🙂  NASA scientists share the scientific reason for our brilliant blue sky below:

“It is easy to see that the sky is blue. Have you ever wondered why? A lot of other smart people have, too. And it took a long time to figure it out!

The light from the Sun looks white. But it is really made up of all the colors of the rainbow.  Like energy passing through the ocean, light energy travels in waves, too. Some light travels in short, “choppy” waves. Other light travels in long, lazy waves.Blue light waves are shorter than red light waves.

All light travels in a straight line unless something gets in the way to reflect it (like a mirror, bend it (like a prism, or scatter it (like molecules of the gases in the atmosphere

Sunlight reaches Earth’s atmosphere and is scattered in all directions by all the gases and particles in the air. Blue light is scattered in all directions by the tiny molecules of air in Earth’s atmosphere. Blue is scattered more than other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a blue sky most of the time.”

(from http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/blue-sky/)

So, that’s the logical reason. Pretty cool.

But I also love this 14th century Persian mystic’s “crazy”, illogical thoughts about our blue sky:

“Even 
After 
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,

“You owe me.”

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.”

~Hafiz 

Hope you’re having a January Blue sky kind of day too.  And if you woke up to face a gray sky – inside or outside – what would it take to shift and choose January Blue instead?  Just go for it.

Spacious Sky, Spacious Mind

Spacious Sky
“…it’s the opening
that’s the point. It is that lightheartedness, that bigness,
that spacious 
mind and love that can hold the suffering and accommodate it
and integrate 
it and understand it.”
~Susan Salzberg
 
Advice to myself today – be Spacious, my friend.
as Spacious as the sky…

Holy Night

Sun

falls over the edge of

a silent Earth

reverent day’s end

holy night slides in

and dark expands into

a landscape of dreams

I am full of this night

potent with possibility

in this dark space

waiting for moonrise

 and remembering

the light.

~Nancy L

 

Simple Joys Abound

Sun on Frost

 “Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.”
Karl Barth

Day Joy

wool socks
long walk

quiet woods
friendly dog

sun on frost.

Night Joy

moonless sky
soft bed

warm promise

dark quiet
winter dreams.

simple joys abound

Cosmos Comes in Many Forms

Cosmos Flowers

“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
~Carl Sagan

☾☽ 

What magnificent expression of the cosmos am I?
How do I choose to express the Universe within me today?
And how do you choose to express your Universe?

☾☽ 

Why are you so enchanted by this world,
when a mine of gold lies within you?

~Rumi

 

 

 

Fear of Bigness

“Our imagination flies; we are its shadow on the earth.”
–Nabokov

Am I actually sharing just a shadow of my true self with the world?  And isn’t the part of me that I dare to share limited, pale and colorless compared to what I am capable of?!  Why do I fear my true potency?

Marianne Williamson wrote about this so eloquently;  our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We fear being too big and bright in the world. We fear our BIG-ness, our potency.

What if I finally take the restraints off and show up in my entirety?

What if the ONLY thing that will save this beautiful planet is choosing to be my Big, Gi-normous self, no matter what? no matter what others think, no matter what others say, no matter what others do, no matter how many “rules” I break in the process?

What will it take for all of us to STOP hiding out and playing small?
What will it take for us to acknowledge and own ALL of our juicy BIG-ness?!

And… what can happen to our world when we embrace our BIG-ness?

What else is possible?

☾☽

“Your divine impulse is yearning to emerge through the human you… In that shift, the more you embrace the Self, the Light, the more you surrender to your own light, the easier it is for you.”
–Sai Maa

☾☽

Our Deepest Fear by Marianne Williamson

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness That most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?  Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

The Hair of the Goddess

Rules for Trees

1. No holding branches

2. No touching roots.

3. No losing your leaves

4. Keep your tree straight.

by
Dana Scharein Dague

🌱

The World

The trees are like the hair of the world.
The city is like the heart of the world.
The wind is a flute player
playing in the night…

by
Noel Berry
(excerpt) 

Both poems are from the book Salting the Ocean; 100 Poems by Young Poets.  All of the poems in Salting the Ocean were written by kids in grades 1-12.