When Something Is Missing in your life
And How To Ramble Your Way Home
I was about to head upstairs from my writing desk and turn on Netflix. The thing is, I usually spend at least half an hour—sometimes more—scrolling through endless options, never quite settling on a show or movie worth watching.
What an utter waste of my time. And worse, I can feel something slipping away in those moments—something I need to stay present for.
I glanced out the window and saw the breeze stirring the trees. I thought, how could that not be enough to entertain me? What if, instead of numbing myself with options, I simply stepped outside and let the leaves speak, watched the branches sway, allowed myself to be held by the rhythm of the wind?
In my writing, mentoring, therapy work—and in my own life—I often emphasize how our inner world shapes, even determines, how we experience the outer world. But time with Nature is different. When we meet Her with presence and appreciation, She doesn’t just mirror what’s within us—She restores what we’ve lost. The trees, the sky, the ground under our feet—these simple things can mend the deepest wounds, bring us home to ourselves, remind us of what we truly want, and guide us toward living in ways that leave a good imprint on the world.
As Mary Oliver invites in the poem below:
"Well, there is time left—fields everywhere invite you into them."
Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?
Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives --
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?
Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!
To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!
To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened
in the night
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.
Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe
I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.
For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!
A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.
Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?
And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.
That was then, which hasn't ended yet.
Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.
I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.
Writing Prompt: Write about how the soul is just a window (and for you, to what?)
Active Contemplation: What “fields everywhere” are inviting you into them?
Contemplative Action: Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
I'm finally in the scribing swing! Hope all's well. x
while the soul after all is only a window. Thank you Julie💗