Monday, September 12, 2016

Looking For Treasures ..."

It's been a long, hot summer and the heat has kept me hiding indoors a lot more than usual. Nature-loving me spent a lot of time hosing down the plants and filling the birdbath. The man who faithfully comes to mow the lawn has lately been mostly raising clouds of dust out of the mottled areas of brown grass.

But I'm finding little jewels among the last vestiges of summer.  Young zinnia plants still popping up through the dry soil and then, somehow bravely producing flowers.  Birds showing up at the birdbath.  Butterflies of many colors that seemingly come from nowhere, doing what looks like the show-biz finale where all the cast comes on stage for the grand bow. Those are some of the works and wonders of Nature.  I even saw a late-season lightning bug the other evening.

In the totally human world, with politics and war news occupying so much of what we read, see, and hear, sometimes I need to just turn away from it and invest in what I'll call "hope". Hope, for me, is a supreme treasure, a rescuing spiritual vehicle ... for me it can be found in reading inspirational quotes, gazing up at the blue sky, watching the dawn climb and glide over the horizon, seeing a comical magazine cartoon, sending money to one of the many animal rescue organizations (http://animalministry.blogspot.com), spending meditative time -- at my piano or keyboard, meditative time while walking among stands of trees, and perhaps the most serious meditative time in the sanctuary of my designated meditation/breathing room.  Hope, for me, is getting the inspiration for a new song. I don't think I've mentioned my newest song "Early In The Morning", recorded at Songwriters Studio a month or two ago. It almost wrote itself one morning while I was waking up (morning is my most creative time). I put it up on Sound Cloud and Reverbnation. It's also on a CD single with a beautiful label created by Sandy. It's also on my revised personal website at www.claralandau.comFor me, that song is loaded with hope!

Anyway, hope is one of the most important by-products and treasures of love. "Peace is the vision; love is the key" is one of my original quotes; the other two are "we are all in the same cosmic canoe" and "whatever works"; I think the three of them are quite compatible. Let's look for the real treasures and help them to endure.