Connected

It’s easy to understand how “connected” I am when I see the sunshine spreading across my wife’s gardens on these summer mornings, for it’s the same sunshine that warms the whole world, including this family of Canada geese Delycia and I passed on our bike ride this morning.

We live in a small town, but we share the sun with limitless numbers of living things, sharing as closely as brothers and sisters. The light that lands on Delycia’s daylilies, and on these geese, also fills valleys in France, and the same sunshine that sometimes brings out our sunscreen starts trees setting out more leaves in China. I try to think of this when the world seems like a disjointed, straggling place. When I feel like a puzzled sightseer on an utterly undisciplined planet, I try to see, in my mind, all the many millions of us living our lives lit up by the same sun. It’s like we’re all the offspring of sunlight. We all need the sunlight to restore us each morning, and all of us – all the many billions of us – say thanks, in our own ways, when it does. It’s like we’re living in an infinitely large family – including all the Canada geese – and we all find comfort together under a light that never leaves us for long, and that illuminates all of our lives in similar ways. Even in our most troublesome times, the sun stays with us, like a father for brothers and sisters, like a mother making sure her children are sharing, as one, her unfailing light. 

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OFF-SPRINGING
a poem about Sharon Z., 82, Blessings, CT
 
On some days, 
she knows she’s the offspring 
of winds and lights, 
the child of swirling stars. 
On those days of wisdom, 
she wonders how the limitless universe 
is able to be the mastermind
of all mountains and weathers 
and mosquitoes and women like her. 
She feels her family all around her - 
the flowing air, 
the always unfolding light, 
the moments singing as they arrive and leave. 
She knows she’s a youngster 
surrounded by brother and sister trees 
and streets and restful clouds 
and people poised on the brink 
of being born again 
every single moment.