Monday Musings: Into Dreamt-for Reality

Blooming bud at Garden Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL

"Our wishes foretell the capacities within ourselves: they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours, in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is already possible into dreamt-for reality." — Goethe

This is the first full week of 2010. I know that the start of the New Year is an arbitrary marker, but there is something that, for me, feels so fresh and full about beginning the year anew.

As I have been thinking of what I would like to accomplish in 2010, I am paying particular attention to those inner callings of my heart — my wishes — and seeing which ones are ready to open into full bloom this year.

Like Goethe, I believe that our innermost dreams and desires are really inner callings of a higher order whispering us into the greatest we came here to be.

Tell me, what wishes are calling to you for the New Year? What small step can you take this week toward creating that "dreamt-for reality"?

Flowering Fridays: New Blooms for a New Year

Gerber daisy at Garden Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida

Spending the transition from 2009 to 2010 in Florida has been a gift for many reasons. (Sun! Beachcombing! Family time! Reading time! Key lime pie! Soft-serve cones!)

But one of my favorite gifts of this trip is the gift of being with flowers and green after so much Wisconsin winter gray.

As I walk around this little beach town where my grandma winters, I am reminded that the flowers are always, always blooming (even if I can't see them from my usual snow-covered northern perch).

I have been soaking up the flowers this week, both for their exuberance and their sense of brilliant promise. And I have been reflecting on the compost of nutrients, made from generous helpings of receptive surrender, weather-worn wisdom and deep-rooted trust, that allows the flower to bloom. 

The past year was one that stretched my soul to the point of tenderness and brittleness: The four months of ICU-illness of my mom. Then grieving her passing. Thinking we sold our house — then not, but moving on anyway. (Our "old" house is still not yet sold.) Confronting some of the darker dusty corners of my personality (the petty judgmental part, the fearful side, the victim-y pieces, all those jagged parts that like to stay stuck in old patterns and old stories). A full-blown existential crisis about the meaning of life.

And those are just a few of the ways I was stretched in the last 12 months.

It will be awhile before I'm fully through integrating all that has transpired from 2009. But I am looking forward to the promise of the New Year and to having this year be the year when some long-held dreams finally take root. (The launching of a new website with new offerings. A trip to England in May. The lovely place by the water that we now call home where — once the snow melts — I can kayak out my back door.)

As I look the year ahead, it is the wise and joyful energy of flowers that I want to take with me as beacons of promise for the journey ahead.

Wishing you all a 2010 that is filled with new blooms of possibility, joy and love!

Monday Musings: Under the Cloak of Winter

Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle ... a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream. — Barbara Winkler

Found this, and many other wonderful quotes on winter and gardening at this link here.

I am escaping the "cloak of winter" in Wisconsin today by traveling with my family to Florida and spending the week with my 88-year-old maternal grandmother.

One of the many unexpected gifts of my mom's illness was getting to be in Cleveland so often these past few months and always staying with my grandmother, who is so fun to be with. I've missed her, our dinners out and our conversations this past month.

I am also looking forward to having some time to relax and reflect with anticipation upon what 2010 might hold and what seeds within me are waiting to sprout.

And, of course, I'm looking forward to seeing some green and flowers at the local garden center in New Smyrna to carry in my heart for the wintry months ahead.

Tell me, what seeds are ready to sprout for you in 2010?