Spring finery

Jumping the queue - an even dozen photos of the spring finery gracing our yard at present. Beautiful day out there - heading up to the upper 60sF according to my weather widget. Tootling and perhaps toddling & probably laundry on tap for today.

Loving kindness

I'm always grateful when I wake up early enough on a Sunday AM to catch On Being. This week's  episode, an interview with Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest famous for his gang intervention programs in Los Angeles, is no exception. Here are some favorite excerpts:

Well, if you presume that God is compassionate loving-kindness, all we're asked to do in the world is to be in the world who God is. And so you're always trying to... imitate the kind of God you believe in. You want to move away from whatever is tiny-spirited and judgmental, as I mentioned. But you want to be as spacious as you can be that you can have room for stuff. And love is all there is, and love is all you are. And you want people to recognize the truth of who they are, that they're exactly what God had in mind when God made them. . .

I read once that the Beatitudes was — the original language was not "Blessed are" or "Happy are" the single-hearted or those who work for peace or struggle for justice. The more precise translation is "You're in the right place if …" And I like that better because it turns out the Beatitudes is not a spirituality. It's a geography. It tells you where to stand. You're in the right place if you're over here.
So, I come from Hollywood where we say, “Location, location, location.” And it's about location. You really have to go out. But knowing that service is the hallway that leads to the ballroom, you don't want to have service be the end. It's the beginning. It's getting you to the ballroom, which is the place of kinship, the place of mutuality, that place that everybody knows here. When you go there, you go, “Who is receiving from whom? Who's the service provider? Who's the service recipient?” You hear yourself say that. “I know I'm here at the soup kitchen, but, my God, I'm getting more from this.” You know, everybody knows this. But it doesn't happen unless you break out. And fear is just fueled by ignorance. So you have to break out of our ignorance. We have to go to the place that frightens us, you know?

That Moon Language (by the 14th-century Persian poet Hafiz)

"Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them, 'Love me.'
Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.
Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?"

If you don't have time to listen to the entire show, the transcript is here.

And last but not least, a shot from almost 2 years ago, 10.April.2013

My trip to the MFA

to see the Hokusai show. You'll probably be able to tell I didn't have my camera & had to rely on the ipad. Still haven't mastered that as an image-taking device. Off kilter, out of focus. When I saw someone taking pictures with a tablet @ the exhibition & said to her that she was much better at it than I, she passed along a tip from her husband, a photographer: keep your elbows close to your body; it keeps the camera steadier. That helped a little, except I have a case cover that I have to keep out of the way of the view finder, which complicates things.

Of interest might be to notice the color of the walls behind the artworks - the only time I thought it didn't work was the "blue room" where the walls were the a shade of the same color in most of the paintings using that particular color, causing them to sort of fade into the background somehow. You can see how that works, or doesn't esp. in the 4th picture.

I was also really intrigued in the wall (that I didn't take pictures of) that showed how you assemble a woodblock print from the bottom up, so to speak, adding details using separate blocks and different colors. My first thought was, wow, that must be hard to get everything to line up.

I think this is the right side up

Outside the swag shop.

Springing spring, no joke

Now that the snow is (mostly) gone from the yard, here are a few shots of brave, early flowers making their appearance in our garden. Any day now I'll be dragging out the antihistamines & getting the air purifier down from the 3rd floor. Fingers crossed this year's allergy season is more like last year's when I didn't have horrendous problems, and not like 2013 when I couldn't sleep for about 2 months.