Author: helvrum@hotmail.com

 

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~Mary Oliver

Lots of love happening over at the I Carry Your Heart Blog today.

This week’s image, for us, was from a backyard finger painting session. Painting with children and seeing a photo of children painting are two very different things. It’s kind of like when somebody sends you a picture of a sleeping baby – it looks so peaceful and calm.

But the truth is, most of the time, it took LOTS and LOTS of hard work to finally get that baby to ‘sleep like a baby’.

Painting with kids, or at least my kids, is like that.

It looks like we should have Mozart piping through a fake speaker shaped like a rock, something we don’t have, but really I was probably chiming in, often, asking them not to get too much paint in their hair.

It was calm for a bit and I attempt to provide opportunities for my kids to freely express their inner artist.

I’m just not the mom that is into my walls getting painted.

So, while it looks like they’re having a zen, Picasso-ish time, they both busted through about 20 sheets of paper and then Audrey hit ‘body-paint-mode,’  which lead to a warm bath.

Painting like Picasso or Sleeping Like a Baby, whichever title it is, the work is well worth it.

Barry is a person that wakes up and hits the floor running, most days literally. He’s constantly in motion. No matter if it is training for a race or at home for a day, he’s most often up and doing something. A couple weeks ago, we’d gone as a family to the lake in the morning and had a pretty active morning. By the time we were snug in our own backyard, hours later, the adults were ready to kick our feet up. Glad I caught this moment because it doesn’t happen very often….