What Do You Do?

What do you do
when the weight of the world
feels too heavy to bear?
Cry out?
Dig in?
Shop
to distract yourself?
Drive away
to somewhere desolate,
beautiful,
lonely
or mysterious?
Stay in a motel for the night and lose yourself in the bedspread’s pattern?
Look for permanence through fossils,
ancient objects
or solid cement statuary that won’t easily disintegrate?
Amuse yourself with strange creatures
and odd juxtapositions?
When there’s no more room for anger,
let peace rain down softly from the trees. Peace and light.

Photos © Sondra Sula.

Take a walk with me by reading my daily devotional book, Meditations on Mendocino by Sondra Sula. Available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle versions.

If you’d prefer a daily river walk, Reflections on the Fox River and Beyond by Sondra Sula, might just be the book for you.

Made for Praise

Joy,
praise,
jubilation —
the saguaro cactus is made
for anthropomorphizing. Just look how curious this one is about me!
Saguaro National Park, divided into two sections on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona is a delight.
It shows how the diversity of creation is astounding.
Even within this desert stick-like cacti with red fruit,
fat ones with yellow fruit,
heart-shaped, pancake-flat cacti with extra-long thorns and 
green-trunked deciduous trees not only grew, but flourished!
Now that I live in a place of towering redwoods, I never expected to be so dwarfed by a cactus. Until I hiked through a saguaro forest, I thought the tallest ones were about the size of a person. Yet one was recorded at seventy-eight feet tall!
Even the saguaros that looked short from a distance seemed to grow as I approached them.
And many were older than me —
with scars to prove it.
But their perceived joy passed itself on to me as I walked about.
I found myself lifting my arms, too, in praise.

Photos © Sondra Sula; with many thanks to Mike and Dan.

Take a walk with me by reading my daily devotional book, Meditations on Mendocino by Sondra Sula. Available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle versions.

If you’d prefer a daily river walk, Reflections on the Fox River and Beyond by Sondra Sula, might just be the book for you.