Your One Wild And Precious Life

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver

I want to wake every morning tickled into the day by the whisper of sunlight on my skin.

I want to drink in the taste of warm pine baked in the hearth of summer air and I want to soften my heart with the exfoliating grit of boots on threadbare trails.

I want to feel the heavy ache of tulips sleeping under spring snow and I want to sing along to the din of stormy arias shouted by crashing waves.

I want to tremble with the purr of buzzing bees nestled in foxglove bells and I want to kiss the glow of autumn leaves tumbling to rest at dusk.

I want to explode into bloom, balmy in the spiced perfume of lilac and cinnamon and vanilla and cayenne.

I want to fade into the glow of laughing flashlights under childhood chins and throb with the aubergine-bruised purples of shooting star skies.

I want to gnash my teeth into the succulent honey of this one wild and precious life and I want to bathe in the deafening firework of the ordinary as it trembles on newborn legs into the spotlight...suddenly plump and dripping with the extraordinary.

Well, friends...tomorrow is my birthday and I feel a little bit of everything about that - some excited, some reflective, some glittering, and some joyful. But mostly I feel grateful. I don't know how or why I got so lucky to have the gift of this community in my life, but I do know how thankful I am for it and I hope I tell you enough - I hope you feel every single day how cherished and valued and appreciated you are because YOU ARE. Thank you for being in my life...you have no idea how much it means to me. Love you.

"Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable but it is the way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them how to cry when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.

The extraordinary will take care of itself. - William Martin