The Dew of Little Things

For in the dew of little things the heart
finds its morning and is refreshed.  Kahlil Gibran

When your feet are prickly and burning, your eyes are twitching and blurry, your brain is drugged and foggy, you don't sit around doing calculus.  You get small.  Really small.

The day is not punctuated by commuting or working or a grocery list or filling up the car with gas.  The world is not whizzing by.

The day is much smaller and looks like this.  You get up and say "where are you toes?"  You wash your face, eat breakfast, kiss a dog, lay down, get back up, put on lip balm, kiss another dog, eat a plum, lay down...  You get the idea.

You get small and do small things, and on these days that take all day to go nowhere, it is amazing how you get present and awake when the world is not whizzing by.

You step into the yard to give finches food and water.  You feel the sun on a fuzzy head.  You stand on the lawn and clean out water cups, the cool trickle from the hose feels so good on tender feet.  You scoop birdseed to refill inside the cage.  The world gets quiet so you can hear a tiny symphony of a bee buzzing, finch wings fluttering happy, and seed pouring into an empty cup.

You make breakfast for a boy who is home from school with a cold.  You butter both sides of the bread, cut out a small hole in the center, lay it on a griddle and drop an egg into the center.  It sizzles and smells good.  You check if it is buttery golden before you carefully flip it.  When the toast is crisp but the yolk is still runny, you hand it to the boy, because this is how he likes it.

You load a dishwasher, put in the soap, run the disposal and turn it on.  Clean dishes on their way.

You open a book.  You read something.

Love bade me welcome yet my soul drew back, guilty of dust and sin.  George Herbert

When your body cannot run all over the world doing all the things you think you need to do, and when your body says "Sit, stay, be still, listen," you start listening.

It is amazing the things you see and the things you hear when the world is not whizzing by.

Carnak:  Dippity Do
Ed:  Dippity Do
Carnak:  What forms on your dippity first thing in the morning?

It is the dew of little things and the heart finds its morning.

You don't have to have cancer to let slowness in.

Sit.  Stay.  Be still.  Listen.

Sh-h-h-h.

My girl Hallie, in her favorite spot, under the dust ruffle of my bed.