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Kate Spring

~ growing a deep-rooted life

Kate Spring

Tag Archives: beauty

Beauty Explains Nothing

15 Sunday May 2016

Posted by Kate Spring in Morning Inspiration, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

beauty, breath, happiness, inspiration, Mary Oliver, meditation, peace, poetry, spirituality, Thich Nhat Hanh

image

sunset, friday night

“Beauty can both shout and whisper, and still / it explains nothing.”

—Mary Oliver, “Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way” from Felicity

These lines caught me immediately.  I’ve been rolling them around on my tongue for days, though part of me wants to erase the second half and still, it explains nothing.  Until this morning, I couldn’t tell you why, exactly, I wanted these words gone, except I didn’t understand what she meant; I wanted to say back, yes, beauty can explain everything.

And then this morning, I read this from Thich Nhat Hanh’s How to Sit : 

“If you ask a child, ‘Why are you eating chocolate?’ The child would likely answer, ‘Because I like it.’  There’s no purpose in eating the chocolate.  Suppose you climb a hill and stand on top to look around.  You might feel quite happy standing on the hill.  There’s not a reason for doing it.  Sit in order to sit.  Stand in order to stand.  There is no goal or aim in sitting.  Do it because it makes you happy.”

There is no purpose.  There is no goal or aim.  Do it because it makes you happy.  And yet, beneath this is the understanding that the meaning is in the mindfulness.  That beauty or action alone explains nothing.  That they are not, in fact, trying to explain anything anyway.

Amidst the industry and utility of this world, I easily forget the simplicity of being.

I forget that we aren’t meant to explain so much as to experience.

Beauty has its way of catching us and bringing us into presence.  Beauty has its way of bringing us beyond the explanation and into the heart of experience.  And so beauty has no duty to explain.  And neither do I, except to tell you what I’ve learned:

Beneath beauty is breath.

You don’t have to explain anything.  Just breathe.  Do it because it makes you happy.

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A Clearing in the Wild

12 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by Kate Spring in Seasons, Wildness

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Tags

beauty, life, nature, photography, Red Tail Ring, Seasons of Beauty, summer

RWS_0036There are times when the roads of my inner landscape are covered with rocks, and my ankles feel weak, and I’m not sure which way to go, until a note of beauty strikes my ears and I gulp in the sounds directing me aright.  There are times when life is so full that the smallest ounce of beauty brings me to tears.

Beauty doesn’t hide in the realm of joy.  That’s it’s power–it’s ability to catch us as we stumble, it’s ability to wake us from blindness, to hold us in sadness, to guide us through pain.

There is so much beauty in this world.  Why can’t we bathe in it, share it, spread it?

That’s what I’m after now, to share beauty with you all.  So I share with you this song, A Clearing in the Wild, by Red Tail Ring, which struck a chord in my heart and re-awakened a longing that pulls me to the wilderness:

“let yourself go
sigh like the rapids
breathe down your body
let the dam overflow
and release the day like a thunder of sparrows
and lie in the stillness when everything’s gone.”

RWS_0055

It’s high summer, when computer time dwindles and the fields keep me outside.  I turn my posts now to frames of beauty, to moments of stillness and moments of wonder and moments that rush through my heart, beating me alive.

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It’s important to stop.

26 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by Kate Spring in Morning Inspiration, Wildness

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

beauty, flowers, nature, spirituality, summer, wildness

grasshoppers on coneflower grasshopper on coneflower grasshopper on coneflower

It’s important to stop.  To let yourself be caught in the middle of a task when you see beauty and revel in it.  Creating beauty is as simple as bearing witness; to extend the sheer joy of color and surprise to another person.

I walk by the coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, every day.  It grows just outside my door.  How long have the grasshoppers perched upon the cones?  How many evenings have I walked past as the shining green armor of their bodies illuminated in the evening sun?  It doesn’t matter, really.  What matters is that I stopped this time.

We can change our lives everyday.  It doesn’t matter where you live, or how you make money.  What matters is that you stop, you look, you see beauty sitting right in front of you, and you bear witness.

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Welcome!

Kate Spring

Kate Spring

Welcome to The Good Heart Life: an organic gardening and lifestyle blog where we grow beauty, joy, and nourishment for the body, soul, and earth. I'm Kate Spring: organic farmer, mother, and chief inspiration officer at Good Heart Farmstead and The Good Heart Life. Grow along with us, and together we'll cultivate a more lively, joyful world one {organic} seed at a time.

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As the seasons shift, we're excited to announce a Bioregional Herbalism Course here at the farm! 🌱 When we first moved to this land, I fell in love with the wild medicinals blooming everywhere: clover, yarrow, self-heal, and more. Though we spend much of our time cultivating, it's the wild ones here that really bring me alive. — The 4-class series will be taught by Kristin Henningson, herbalist and instructor at Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism, owner of Banyan Moon Botanicals, and a Good Heart CSA Member! — Kristin will guide you through the landscape to learn about wild medicinal plants in our own backyards. Each class will be taught at the farm, and if you've ever wanted to explore this land beyond the CSA pick-up, this is the perfect opportunity! — Pop over to banyanmoonbotanicals.com {link in profile} to learn more and register. The first class is Sunday, May 6! You can sign up for individual classes or the whole series. — AND a percentage of proceeds for this series will be donated to the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism to help support access to healthcare through their sliding scale community clinic.
7 years ago today we said "I do" in an Alaskan courthouse on our way across the country.  In all my years of imagining my wedding, I never could have anticipated eloping. — There were no flowers, no bridesmaids in lilac colored dresses, no string quartet playing Pachelbel's Cannon.  There was the two of us, the magistrate, the town librarian and courthouse clerk as witnesses.  And it was perfect.  Wild and Present and Free and Perfect. — There's no one else I'd want to venture across the country and through this lifetime with. ❤️ Happy Anniversary my love — This photo isn't of us at our wedding, but it IS proof that a couple of farmers can clean up. 😉🌱
It's going to look like this in a month, right?  Dreaming of May 2014, when Waylon was still a little plump babe, and we planted rudbeckia as a family when I got home from my day job, and the sheep hadn't yet eating thousands of dollars worth of kale and broccoli 🌱🐏 😂 oh the things we can laugh about now... — And perhaps in another few months I'll be laughing about this April snow and rain and snow.  But for now, I'm curled up with wool socks, long johns and a fleece, and I'm going to make hot chocolate...and you know what?  Hot chocolate is almost as good as all the green in this picture.  So I'll take it and smile and go into the greenhouse when I need a dose of spring. — Thank you to everyone who's dreaming of impossible things on my photo 2 posts back.  Let's keep dreaming and growing together 🌱🌱🌱
I don't know if Edge slipped with some compost, but this sprout is so big he's taking up the entire tray! Funny how some seeds just grow like a weed...🌱
If I only looked outside at the snow, I'd think it was impossible to eat fresh salad right now. So often impossibility is created by our state of mind. By accepting the current environment or experience as the only possibility. Thank goodness for gardens. Thank goodness for seeds and their reminders of what can grow from a tiny intention well tended. — When I was in college, my dad often sent me letters. One day I opened an envelope to a card with this quote on the front: “There's no use trying,” she said. “One can't believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven't had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." — Inside he wrote simply: 'Kathryn, Keep believing in impossible things. The world is depending on you.' Love, Dad — I’ve carried this card with me everywhere I go. I admit that I’ve been called naive. I’ve been called idealistic in a way that implied it’s a bad thing. I’ve been told to be more realistic. — And I’m totally willing to be realistic. But I challenge the notion that being realistic means accepting things as they are. — I’ve spent too much time growing food and flowers, too much time coaxing abundant harvests from nothing more than seeds, water, and sunlight to believe that things will always stay the same. Most often, what is impossible is really only unthought of. — So, on this snowy April day, I invite you to believe an impossible thing. And if someone laughs at you for it, know that I believe in you and your ability to grow. Know that I'm eating fresh salad right now, despite the snow and slush. — What impossible thing are you daring to believe today? No matter how small or big it is, I’d love to know. Impossible becomes possible when we give energy to it and share it. 🌱
For 3 years we raised Icelandic sheep, and they didn't care if it was sleeting or snowing or raining. We built their barn around them, and even after it was finished, they often chose to stand outside in all the weather. ❄️☔️ It's been 3 years since we've said goodbye to the flock and our shepherding days, but I'm channeling their wildness amidst the fresh layers of slush outside. — Waylon and I rambled through the forest this morning on a nature scavenger hunt, and it turns out that when you're not farming, this weather really isn't so bad. And if I imagine it's December, it's actually quite lovely. ❄️ And if I imagine I'm an Icelandic sheep, I don't care much about the weather at all, but suddenly get a craving for alfalfa pellets. 🐏 What are YOU imagining on this snowy/rainy/slushy mid-April afternoon?

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