puzzlement

Marsh Marigold

One of the primary lessons from writing this blog is that the world is, at the same time, ordinary and miraculous. I often find that I am filled with wonderment by something that most people would consider self-evident or routine. I remember one time on Martha's Vineyard when Dick Crowley said that a conversation I had initiated made his head hurt. I honestly don't know sometimes whether this emphasis on the miraculous within the routine is helpful or not.

The arising and passing away of phenomena in the natural world has often been a cause for wonderment. The marsh marigold, along with thousands of other species, are now showing themselves in my world. A month ago they were nowhere to be found, and I mean nowhere. If you wanted to view a marsh marigold, where in the world could you possibly go to see one? Now they are here. For a few days and weeks they will seemingly be everywhere. Then they will be gone.

This dynamic seems like the movements at a departure gate at a large airport. An area will be empty, then people will start to arrive, it will be full of activity for a short time only to be empty again. This pattern repeats itself over and over. Why do I even care?

painter/creator

shad tree in bloom

This kind of detail is possible in the realm of nature because the painter/creator is inside the art.

John Kahle

dutchman's breeches

Some of the names for wildflowers are terrible, bastard toadflax?! Some are great. These are dutchman's breeches. Don't they look like clothes drying on a line? I learned something this morning. Breeches are actually knee-length trousers. I always thought it was just another way of saying britches.

different

Woke up the other day at 4:45 to sunlight coming through the bedroom windows, and the sounds of birds. Buzzing of bumblebees, and the sound of peepers coming from bogs & other wet places. It's a different world.

flowers

This magnolia tree was planted at the Vermont Zen Center as a memorial to my brother, John Scott Kahle, many years ago. Actually I planted it at a work sesshin. It was only a couple of feet tall at the time. For awhile it didn't look like it would make it. There is a small plaque underneath with his name on it. It is located at the entrance to the Center, and I walk by it a couple hundred times a year, and remember my brother who died young. It is special to see it so beautiful and thriving at this time of the year. Grateful to be attending the work sesshin up there again this year in a couple of weeks.

Such a solemn world of flowers!
Such a spectacle,
this rich world of the flowers!
You , John, are living brightness
on the earth under the heavens...

From nowhere you came. You go nowhere.
You stay nowhere. You are nowhere attached.
You occupy everything, you occupy nothing.
You are the becoming of indescribable change.
You are love. You are the flower.
Flowers

unblemished

Every year on Green-up day, I stop along a certain bridge in Ira, and find the bloodroot blooming. There is something very comforting about going to the same place at the same time, and finding the same thing, year after year. It's amazing to me that something growing wild like this, out in the puckerbrush somewhere, could be so perfect, unblemished.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil or spin, yet I tell you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Matthew 6:28

ramps!