Birthday Gifts

Another year older and wiser.

I had a lovely birthday weekend. All the important women in my life were with me--My mother, my sister, my daughter, my college roommates(from across the miles), and my three dear local girlfriends. I am blessed, loved, and nurtured by these women. Too often I take that love & support for granted, and I hope in the next year I can work at being more mindful of such blessings.

One of my girlfriends gave me this message in a card:

The Real To-Do List

• Sing
• Smile at strangers
• Keep learning
• Notice kindness
• Eat ice cream
• Hope
• Count your blessings
• Laugh
• Love
• Love some more

Those sound like things I want to do this coming year.

My other dear friend, whom I met in 1970 (eegads, I really am old) and who is without a doubt the wisest, deepest thinking person I've ever known, wrote this poem for me as an ode the the new directions I am seeking.

A Burning Deep Within

A burning deep within--

like a mysterious light

glimpsed far deeper in the woods

than you have dared to walk.

A beckoning, "come home:"

home to your uniqueness;

home to the home

this world cannot offer;

home to the place you belong,

that which you love.

To go there you must

develop apatheia,

the discipline of detachment

from all that is trivial,

that fragments or scatters,

develop a unifying heart

that gathers like a glass

refracting rays of light

from the source

of the burning deep within.

--B.T. 7/15/06