EMBRACING THE ORDINARY

How do you capture the beauty of the world around you? A friend of ours tills the soil, plants and tends the roses, photographs them catching each drop of moisture on each velvet petal, then turns the photographs into greeting cards and makes gifts of them.  So start-to-finish hand-made with care.  

A family member has taken chisel, hammer, wrecking and pry bars to an outdated bathroom and is creating a place of natural beauty for invigorating showers.  Making a place of joy for their morning and evening routines.  

I try to garden in spite of the deer and pesky squirrels.  And fill the house with plants to clean the air, add humidity and promote sleep.  I like to photograph what I find beautiful and meaningful, simple things like the shadows on snow in the photo above. Or the close up of tiny pine cones, or the icicles dripping from the mossy rocks.

Many people write.  My husband is one of those, capturing the truth, the sadness and the difficulty of everyday life.  All of us I suppose keep the beauty of life in our memories and that may be the best way--noticing and remembering.  And imitating.  Somewhere I read, be like a tree:  flexible, adaptable, resourceful, bending with the wind and springing back after a storm.  Or like a houseplant:  calm and steady.  

All of this fits an idea that I've been coming across about embracing the ordinary, that once we learn to enjoy ordinary things we can stop searching for bigger and better.  Peace and contentment find us more easily.  We can enjoy the rose we planted, the room we renovated, the words we've written, the memories we treasure--all ordinary things to do.  When we appreciate the ordinary the world looks more special doesn't it?  That's what I want to do more of this year.  You too?