Day 13 Mindful Moments Challenge

Balmy Boston -- quite an ironic statement for January in the northeast. Today as the mercury inched to 50 degrees I observed the relative nature of temperature. This afternoon sun shone and the snow seemed to melt before my eyes, I opened my car windows and remarked how warm the air felt. Yet, in August if the temperature was 50 degrees, I would bundle up in a sweatshirt and bemoan the fact that we were having such cold weather....a humorous mindful moment that I hope I won't forget come summertime...it's all relative!

Day 9 Mindful Moments Challenge

Even when you think you think you "know" an object, there is always a new observation to be made, an opportunity for a mindful moment, and so it was for me with a clementine today.
Things I learned that I didn't know before:
  • You can't smell a citrus smell when the peel in intact, only upon scratching or opening the skin
  • Each segment is not the same size
  • There were 11 segments in my clementine, but 9 in one I ate yesterday
  • I found a seed in one of the segments but none in the other segments
What did you notice today?

Day 8 Mindful Moments Challenge

Slow traffic near Harvard Square in Cambridge Massachusetts today gave me the opportunity to notice the trees by the side of the road from my car window. Observing the bark of the old sycamores reminded me of the apt name my kids used to call these trees -- "cartoon trees" because they looked like the kind of trees a child would draw as a cartoon. This mindful moment gave me a pause and a smile in an otherwise busy day.

Mindful

Thank you to one of my readers, Dee, for "re-Minding" me of this lovely poem by Mary Oliver. So perfect for our month of Mindful Moments


Mindful

by Mary Oliver
Everyday
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for —
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world —
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant —
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these —
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

"Mindful" by Mary Oliver from Why I Wake Early. © Beacon Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission.