Tag: Mark Nepo

Open to Rainbows

When I am open and receptive, I am not alone. Sitting outside sipping coffee, I am connected to all the hands and all the lives that were involved in picking the beans, making the coffee, and getting it here.

Listening to and watching birds opens me to a symphony of sounds, colors, and graceful movements.

I see the greens of summer above and around me and I feel the slight breeze of the morning.

In the background, I can hear vehicles heading more east than west on Route 50, starting a long holiday weekend. Though I can’t know the people driving by individually, it’s not hard to picture or remember the feeling of heading to the beach for the weekend.

When I allow myself to be open and receptive, perceptive, I don’t feel isolated. I feel connected. It’s a feeling that sets the tone for the day.

In “The Book of Awakening,” Mark Nepo writes, “The dearest things in life cannot be owned, but only shared.” Last Sunday afternoon and evening, Holly and I shared a show of God’s handiwork that was awe inspiring.

Outside to watch the sunset, we listened for birds using the Cornell Ornithology Lab Merlin app’s Sound ID. We heard Indigo Buntings, Purple Martins, Cardinals, American Goldfinches, Chipping Sparrows, Carolina Wrens, Red-Eyed Vireos, and Blue Grosbeaks.

Blue Grosbeaks were new to me and they were the noisiest and most active of the birds we were hearing. As we walked down the garden, Holly pointed out a nest in a bush and as we got near, the mother flew out and into a nearby tree. As she chirped her annoyance at us being there, Sound ID showed her to be a Blue Grosbeak. Looking up more about them, their nest is exactly as described. Hope to see some little Grosbeaks soon.

Next for our evening in the yard, despite very little rain, a rainbow appeared, developed, and thickened right over the house. It was an amazing light show.

There was a stretch in my life where I loathed rainbows—they carried some baggage I didn’t feel like unpacking, and I wrote them off as illusions of light, nothing substantial, nothing of substance. And that’s all true.

But how much of the beauty we find in life and in Creation is transient and fleeting? We know that and we can still appreciate it and marvel at it when it’s there. I live for sunrises and sunsets and they are also impermanent plays of light, which need to be enjoyed in the moment.

If I want to be available to the full spectrum and experience of God’s works in Creation, I need to be open to rainbows. It’s to my benefit and God’s glory.

The next part of the show for the evening was the sunset itself, which incorporated the clouds and the whole sky.

The Sunday evening show was on the last day of June. The month of July does not include vacation or travel for us, it’s about being open to rainbows and experiencing what is around us each day and every weekend. The idea is to “carpe” the month in every way we can. I am a list maker, here are some of the things on the radar screen:

  • Kayaking/paddleboarding
  • Parks (both new and known)
  • Birding
  • Sunrises and sunsets
  • Be out under the stars
  • Live music
  • Fire pit nights
  • Beach days
  • Cooking/grilling
  • Summer reading
  • Skateboarding
  • Gardening
  • Walks/hikes

If we do things on that list each day and every week, we should have a shot at carpe’ing July.

A skateboarding friend Landy Cook already put some of that into play when on July 2 he organized a social skate along Rails to Trails and at the pump track and skate park in Easton. It was a good first turn out and stellar evening, to be repeated weekly.

A number of author Annie Dillard’s words dance through my head regularly. One of the main quotes is this one:

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

There is no getting around that. If I daydream but never do anything, my days won’t reflect the life of my mind, and neither will my life.

Each day is an opportunity to do something. Beyond making a list of things I hope to do, what would a meaningful day, any day, look like?

What if every day included doing:

  • Something creative
  • Something prayerful/meditative
  • Something physical
  • Something practical
  • Something productive
  • Something peaceful/soothing
  • Something loving
  • Something selfless
  • Something outgoing
  • Something spontaneous
  • Something sensory/sensuous

If I can think about those kinds of things to do each day and look back at the end of the day to see how I did, how I spend my days might add up to a life I want to live.

The wonder of being here

Sometimes I’m drawn forward and sometimes I am turned to circle back, usually so I can pick something up I need to go forward. That’s an eyebrow-raising, quizzical-look statement, I know. Let’s try this:

This past weekend, I went for a run–my first run since early April. It was slow, but it didn’t matter–the smile on my face running through John Ford Park, saying good morning to folks I encountered, feeling air in my lungs and my feet in motion, even if stumbling slowly, was something I have been missing.

Running, skateboarding, and writing are three life-giving activities I discovered in my early teens that sustain and stoke me in my early 50s. There is a thread that connects them.


I’ve been reading Mark Nepo’s book, “Drinking from the River of Light: the Life of Expression,” which I take in small bites, so I can savor it and let is wash over me. Nepo circled me back to one of my favorite writers, poet William Stafford, by sharing and talking about Stafford’s poem, “The Way It Is”–

“There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.“

Nepo writes, “To discover the thread that goes through everything is the main reason to listen, express, and write… I began to realize that listening, expressing, and writing are the means by which we stay clear, the inner practices by which we realize our connection to other souls and a living Universe.” Then he invites us to think about, write about, and try to discern what that thread is for us, individually. What is the constant that is with you, through joy, pain, sadness, lows, highs, that makes you, you?

As I sat there, coffee, sunlight, and summer-breeze-fueled, scratching out a few notes, the thing that hit me was: a sense of wonder. That’s the thread. From marveling at honeysuckle and marsh grasses in the neighborhood as a kid, to Morning Glories and Great Blue Herons as an adult, a childlike sense of wonder has underpinned it all.

Nepo is a writer I’ve just found. He circled me back to Stafford and a poem I’ve been reading for years–something I needed to pick back up to move forward with new eyes.

Running, skateboarding, and writing have been wonder-stokers for me all along. Somehow they have distilled over time to where the wonder is there now as soon as I step on a board, pick up a pen, or put running shoe to pavement.


Yesterday morning, Landy Cook and I met at the Oxford Conservation Park to start the week off with a sunrise longboarding adventure. The sun was smiling with us and lent its rays to every moment and every photo. It was a morning to catch up, to laugh, to skate, to enjoy the moments, to breathe in the day. It’s a place we skate frequently, it’s not new scenery, but every morning is its own, there is always something new or different to catch, to appreciate, to be grateful for.

For me, part of those experiences, those moments, of being given a gift, is wanting to communicate it, to share it, maybe if I am lucky to wake something up for someone else, to connect in some way.

Nepo says it: “listening, expressing, and writing are the means by which we stay clear, the inner practices by which we realize our connection to other souls and a living Universe.” That’s what writing brings to my aesthetic and Spirit-filled table. Even rolling on a skateboard, I make sure to have a pocket notebook and pen to try to catch something of the wonder of the experience.


A couple weeks ago I was sent back to another favorite writer, John O’Donohue. Last summer we led a small group discussing his book, “Anam Cara.” A friend from church continues to read and reflect on it regularly and he wanted to pass along a copy to someone who is going through profound loss, hoping it might give them something to latch onto–perspective, compassion, care, connection, hope.

The class last summer was right around this time of year and a memory, a quote from “Anam Cara” circled its way back in front of me. It’s a thought that struck me as something Holly has been working through after coming back from a 12-day mission trip to Amazon river villages in Peru, where the life of the villagers was deliberate, present, and connected to the days and nights, the land, and each other. O’Donohue wrote:

“It is a strange and magical fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here.”

The miracle, the wonder, of being here. That’s our connection to each other, other living souls, to God, to the living Universe; whether we are in Peru, the backyard, or skateboarding with the sunrise.