Writing a post each week has grown into a beautiful practice of noticing what I learned in the previous week, acknowledging little miracles that happened, and reviewing how I dealt with new challenges.

Each Friday, I spend a few hours reflecting on the beauty of life.

I pull out the gifts I found through experiencing life that week, and I share them with you for inspiration.

I also hope that you reflect on your week and find all the little diamonds that often get overlooked as we work through all the stresses, pressures, responsibilities, packed work schedules, cooking, grocery shopping, cleaning, bill paying, caregiving, puppy-walking activities (phew!) LOL

Speaking of diamonds… I got a big one this week <3

Blais wrote a beautiful poem for his English class. It’s called Wandering cloud:

Wandering cloud

That sits alone all day

Over mountains and hills

I see millions of daffodils

Beside the lake, beneath the trees

Dancing in the breeze.

Every night watching the stars shine

Twinkling stretched in a never-ending line

Tens of thousands I saw at a glance

Flying across the sky like a prom dance

Watching the waves in the ocean sway

Seagulls happy and most gay

I hang for hours and hours

Waiting and hoping for some company

For days I lay thinking

Is this it?

Is there nothing but deafening silence?

But then in the distance I see

SWOOSH

Is that another cloud friend for me?

Writing a post each week has grown into a beautiful practice of noticing what I learned in the previous week, acknowledging little miracles that happened, and reviewing how I dealt with new challenges.

Each Friday, I spend a few hours reflecting on the beauty of life.

I pull out the gifts I found through experiencing life that week, and I share them with you for inspiration.

I also hope that you reflect on your week and find all the little diamonds that often get overlooked as we work through all the stresses, pressures, responsibilities, packed work schedules, cooking, grocery shopping, cleaning, bill paying, caregiving, puppy-walking activities (phew!) LOL

Speaking of diamonds… I got a big one this week <3

Blais wrote a beautiful poem for his English class. It’s called Wandering cloud:

Wandering cloud

That sits alone all day

Over mountains and hills

I see millions of daffodils

Beside the lake, beneath the trees

Dancing in the breeze.

Every night watching the stars shine

Twinkling stretched in a never-ending line

Tens of thousands I saw at a glance

Flying across the sky like a prom dance

Watching the waves in the ocean sway

Seagulls happy and most gay

I hang for hours and hours

Waiting and hoping for some company

For days I lay thinking

Is this it?

Is there nothing but deafening silence?

But then in the distance I see

SWOOSH

Is that another cloud friend for me?

He read it to me first and then told me how he wasn’t sure if he should submit it because his teacher told him there was another poem about a wandering cloud.

We looked it up. William Wordsworth wrote it in 1807. It’s called “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.”

Blais read each stanza and we both got goosebumps at how similar the poems were – all about the author’s solitude and the joy he finds in nature that surrounds him.

“Mama, I swear I didn’t plagiarize,” Blais said, disturbed.

“I believe you,” I assured him.

“Did you ever read it to me when I was a baby?” he wondered, thinking that maybe the poem emerged from some deep corners of his memory cells.

I hadn’t.

I asked him to tell me about his process of writing it.

“I thought of a lonely cloud in the sky, and I started typing and the words just flowed out. It was fast,” he said. And when he was done, he read it and really liked it.

I smiled and told him it’s “big magic” (as Elizabeth Gilbert explains in her book by the same title) – divine inspiration that ‘comes to us’ when we are open to receive it, and when we make space for it to flow through us. (And sometimes, the same idea comes to more than one person and more than one time because it carries a message that needs to be retold again and again and again.)

I have experienced it many times in my life. It’s an amazing thing!

You know what you are creating is divinely inspired when you aren’t critical of it, but rather when you look at what you created and you feel blessed by it.

It’s when you feel humbled and honored at the same time, and you don’t feel like taking full credit for it – only acknowledge your contribution and the fact that you were present to it and that you actively participated.

It helps when we hone our skills so that when the inspiration comes, our ‘creative muscles’ are in good form. And it helps to remove the blocks of fear so we can show up with courage and willingness to open ourselves up.

Here is the cool part: we ALL have access to this divine flow. You may call it grace, magic, creative energy, life force…

It doesn’t only show up as inspiration for us to create poems, music, and art. It shows up as inspiration to creativity in many forms.

You can use it as you reflect on your week. Take your time, breathe, leave some space between your thoughts and your analysis, and it will reveal those little miracles that are happening around you.

You can lean on it as you respond to people and events. It will guide you to respond with more kindness and compassion, instead of judgment and criticism.

Let it surprise you. Let it make you feel like you were as light as a cloud wandering about a beautiful row of daffodils, dancing stars and crashing waves.