host of golden daffodils.

{tree bursting, my back alleyway}

{daffodil in my mama's garden}

{siberian iris shoots, also in my mama's garden}

Inspired by the daffodils, I think I shall post what is one of my most dearest, favourite poems ever -- Tintern Abbey, by Wordsworth. I first read the poem about six years ago, in my first year of University in English class, & ended up writing an essay about Wordsworth's writings, and their similarities with Taoist philosophies. There are so many poems that I adore & appreciate, but it's rare for me, & wonderful, to connect so spiritually to a piece of writing -- to read something & feel as if it is reflecting your own thoughts. The way he writes about this place -- Tintern Abbey, on the banks of the Wye -- I feel about so many places dear to me. The riverlot-forest outside the town where I grew up, the Kananaskis mountains, the deep bushes & streams near Fox Creek where I've fished. I love how he expresses the way in which places become a part of us, how we carry them with us, how this nourishes us:

"While here I stand, not only with the sense /Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts /
That in this moment there is life and food /For future years."

And so many other parts of the poem just completely resonate with my own spirituality, nameless but everpresent, & so strong. My beliefs are... rather personal, & solitary, & I don't mind that; it's just so lovely to hear echoes of them, sometimes, in the speech of others.

"While with an eye made quiet by the power / Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, / We see into the life of things."

'Nature' is not something separate from people; there is no culture/nature divide, rather to understand one's place in the totality of things is simply a shift, a re-adjustment to a different way of seeing.

And this part, this idea of spirit within everything (pantheism, I suppose) is just it. IT. This 'force that rolls through all things'...

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A love of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

Growing up Eastern Rite Catholic, there is a part of me that relates on some level to Byzantine rite and ritual, perhaps because I can find some comfort in repetition, & ancestral connection. However, that tradition does not express or encapsulate what I believe, where I instinctively place my faith; I find that I relate simply to that force that inspires one to all those "little, nameless, unremembered, acts / Of kindness and of love".