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Happy Thanksgiving

Today I give special thanks for my life and the people in my life; particularly, all those who have taught me things about the world and about myself that I never knew existed or even realized.  In the last 4 years alone, while some aspects of my life have remained wearily constant, there are others that have grown leaps and bounds.  And for that, I am especially thankful.  I'm looking forward to what the next 4 years have in store.

via the NY Times today:

On Thanksgiving it’s usual to think back to that first feast, one far better known in custom and imagination than it is in fact. What is certain is that in 1620, when the Mayflower was rounding into shoal waters near Cape Cod, there was little reason, apart from faith, to expect that the settlement its passengers hoped to found would succeed. By the following autumn more than half of the 101 humans on board the Mayflower would be dead. 

For all the natural wealth of this new world, it also turned the Pilgrims’ knowledge into ignorance. Their English seeds were nearly useless. They carried with them barely enough food to sustain themselves and the ship’s crew until April 1621, when the Mayflower returned to England. Had it not been for the agriculture of local American Indian tribes, already tragically decimated by European diseases, the Plymouth colony would surely have followed earlier New World settlements into extinction. 

To us, looking back from the staggering opulence of the present day, life in 1620 looks more than threadbare. It looks all the barer the more accurately you understand it. But it was life. And while there is life, there is always room for thanks, for a gratitude that is never threadbare. It is not the feast we give thanks for, but our presence at it. 

One of those early settlers called America “a most hopeful place.” We accept that now as nearly a truism. But it took a certain cast of mind to see a hopeful place in those grim November woods, in the early snows of 1620, among the lingering effects of nine hard weeks at sea. In that cast of mind, you quickly learn to give thanks abundant for being present at the feast of life, just as we do today.

Jose Gonzalez - Crosses

Perfection

The Devotion Project: More Than Ever

A wonderful short film and beautiful story I found on one of the blogs I read.  7 decades of love.  An inspiration:

new Ingrid

Reluctance

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods

And over the walls I have wended;

I have climbed the hills of view

And looked at the world, and descended;

I have come by the highway home,

And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,

Save those that the oak is keeping

To ravel them one by one

And let them go scraping and creeping

Out over the crusted snow,

When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,

No longer blown hither and thither;

The last lone aster is gone;

The flowers of the witch hazel wither;

The heart is still aching to seek,

But the feet question "Whither?"

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?

Robert Frost

Mumford & Sons - Ghosts That We Knew

I Love, I Love

I heard love can fall so hard, it can bury a kingdom
I heard it makes the spring appear out of season
It's a storm in a shadowbox, a force to be reckoned with,
When it finds you and find you, it will.

And I'd not believed it til I loved, I love
The rivers sing and stars awaken above me
And the wind and the moon in fits of restless conspiring
Turn night to heaven for you.

But I am going to a far, far land
I know it sure as I've a past and a future
With my maps on the table, you see, I have lost many things
So many I won't turn back.

And were I a deadwood ship, my heart a compass
I would leave with inanimate grace, no love could touch me
But I live and I know that I'll burn as I grow
Though it might break my heart to walk away and so

As a moon may adore you and remain, high moon
The wind may crown your head with leaves, and keep blowing
So I'll stop and I'll watch you, for I love, I love
And then be on my way. And then be on my way.




thank you Dar Williams.

M83 - Midnight City

Peanut-Pecan Butter and Oatmeal Cookies

Recipe here

Coldplay - U.F.O.