Home for a Rest: Gratitude

I returned home from Kelowna, tired and happy.  The weather was cold but good for walking (which I did, for hours and hours and hours).  The kids are all right-excellent, in fact.  Master DD works in the forest, taking coordinates and making maps; Ms. DD rents a lovely house, quite large, which is good, because she has, um, several cats. (Not to complain: it was caring for abused and homeless cats that brought Ms. DD the good karma which led to her current living quarters.) I bonded with this guy, Cruikshank, who is technically not her cat.  He's the landlady's boy and he lives outside, although he's discovering that food and indoor shelter are not bad things.  He's huge, but one of the other cats beats on him, despite the fact that Cruikshank could squash him like a bug:

No one told him what guitar strings used to be made of!

There is beauty everywhere and it touches my heart, from Ms. DD's backyard:

That gorgeous terror in the background is Lex, the beautiful bully of the household.

To stunning autumn colours:

To the view from the harbour on a cloudy day:

When I wasn't walking about, I knit and wrote and gave myself permission to draw and paint badly, because if one can't risk doing things badly, why do them at all?

On the left, socks knit from commercial yarn; on the right, the indestructible hand spun hiking socks.

 

The wind it blows. . . .

I think we need a bigger boat!

Aerial Viewpoint

Woven throughout the wonders I see here is sadness, too.  There are more and more people living on the street in the downtown core. With their possessions jammed into shopping carts, they huddle in doorways and sleep in bushes.  It's inexcusable in a country with such wealth and abundance to see signs like this:

People help where they can, with open hearts. The core of many of the problems is a vicious cycle of mental illness and poverty, problems not solved only by individual assistance.  These problems require a larger, kinder view on the part of governments and the powerful.  In the midst of our great good fortune, we need to remember that We are all One, that there is no "Other," that circumstance has much to do with where we are now. 

I am grateful for what I have.  It's more than enough.  I wish you all great good fortune.

Namaste.
(Happy Birthday to Kathy R and my sister, Nancy!)