The other night at the end of my workday, a new
friend came by and whisked me off on an adventure. We drove across the San Rafael bridge in her little black convertible, straight into this sunset beyond the sacred Mount
Tamalpais… what a glorious, glorious life I have.

And then I woke up to this incredible poem in my in-box: ‘Mindful’, by Mary Oliver…

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.

It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

~ Mary Oliver ~ from ‘Why I Wake Early’