Blessings

What I want to remember at the end of each day are the moments that name themselves as blessings. There is a finite amount of work you can do in a day, but blessings are infinite and free. I don’t know how to say it any other way. I’m always stumbling over the words, because how can I possibly describe how it feels to bend down in the dirt and harvest flat leaves of deep green spinach, wrinkled and springy? I don’t know why this is so important. I only know that doing this is what I love. I don’t know what to give back to the world except for its own wonders reflected in my eyes. I don’t know what to write down except the same sentence, over and over. Sunlight on spinach and kale and mustard greens. Walden Pond. Waking up to the blue ridge of sky lightening in my window. Wind shaking the three aspen trees by the washtub at the farm. They are all the same sentence, all different names for the same thing. It’s all the same wonder, the same plea, the same prayer. I just want us to wake up every day and look around and bow to what we see that is whole and beautiful.

What I want to remember at the end of each day are the moments that name themselves as blessings. Harvesting spinach under the wide morning sky. Cold water burning my hands as I washed beets and radishes. The papery yellow leaves of soybean plants as I walked down the row at sunset, gathering dinner. The white back of the moon hanging over the field. The sound of each stem of chard as I snapped it from the plant.

Blessings are infinite and free. I only want us all to take as many as we can find, to walk into the world with our arms open, ready to collect what simple wonder we can from the world, ready to gather it up and hold it close and give it away.