Look and see

"The little things? The little moments?
They aren't little." Jon Kabat-Zinn


I've seen some pretty spectacular landscapes in my lifetime, but over the last few years I find my eye being drawn more and more towards the little places. Perhaps it is part of aging. Maybe. But most people don't live around dramatic vistas. I'd like to think it may be a change in perspective. There is an intimacy in the small that isn't always there in the breathtaking views. Those have this easy ability to gather us up simply because they are so impressive--blazing skies, panoramic vistas, wild shorelines. They can capture us without our consent by the sheer presence they exude.

Little secret places as I like to call them, are a completely different experience. To begin with, you have to be looking most of the time to come across them. There are times we stumble upon them, but for the most part, we have to be on the look out. That looking carries with it an openness for the encounter. We won't be swept off our feet by the view. We allow ourselves to be swept up because we noticed. We learn to experience the vastness inherent in the little worlds which quietly exist all around us.

Cultivating the ability to notice little things can bring large gifts. I believe that when we begin to see the loveliness in a patch of moss, or the silvery lichen dressing a branch, or the glisten of rain as it swirls around the curbstones, we are training our hearts to notice other things as well. We begin to see the nuances in conversations, the different layers of taste in food, the fragrances in the air. If we keep at it, we may discover words like 'astonished' or 'tender'. We may even allow ourselves to see what is underneath our jumbled feelings or the look in someones face.

There is much about living that makes it easy to gloss over daily life. The tangle of responsibilities most of us carry makes it hard to believe there is room for much more. But I believe that when we pull back even a tiny bit to look and see, we give ourselves nourishment and substance. We gain perspective and sometimes even hope when we return to the work at hand.

Look and See Mary Oliver

This morning, at waterside, a sparrow flew
to a water rock and landed, by error, on the back
of an eider duck; lightly it fluttered off, amused.
The duck, too, was not provoked, but, you might say, was
laughing.

This afternoon a gull sailing over
our house was casually scratching
its stomach of white feathers with one
pink foot as it flew.

Oh, Lord, how shining and festive is your gift to us, if we
only look, and see.