Country Living

What Do You See?

  Occasionally, a neighbor crosses our fields, homeward bound after a strenuous afternoon scrambling around ponds and up and down rocky hills on the land behind ours. A couple of days ago he discovered me sitting in the midst of the meadow, savoring the passing fleecy clouds, listening to the wind whispering in the dried grass, picking up the song of the last of the crickets, watching a large, green grasshopper hawking over the meadow, feeling the still-warm wind on …

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DOING NOTHING

  There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. I’ve just been dipping into Thoreau’s Sounds, and I’ve been stung. As Jon Kabat-Zinn points out in his fine meditation book, Wherever you Go There You Are, this passage is really about cultivating stillness. Was it possible that I could simply stop? Years ago, I had …

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Throwing More Love On The Fire

When I am hardest pressed, one truth becomes resoundingly self-evident. In the darkest times, the unlikely solution seems to be to add more love. The first time this occurred to me was when dealing with the grinding wickedness of a five year old son. That afternoon nothing worked with my generally pleasant, charming boy. Not reasoning. Not distraction. Not the array of interesting games and puzzles I offered. Not reading aloud. “No” was everywhere. Three times we had changes of …

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