A Life Gathered Twig by Twig

As I sip my morning brew I glance out the windows at the birdbath. I have many places inside and outside of my home where I can observe the worlds: human neighborhood in front, and living sanctuary all around me.

Many birds have visited the birdbath this morning as I write from my office perch. Suddenly the birdbath becomes active with splashing and song. Every time I see movement or a flicker crossing the street out the corner of my eye - there is another species of bird stopping by for a drink, a bath, a pause - robins, sparrows, cardinals, finches, sparrows, and wrens alike all politely taking turns in the fresh water.

There is a tiny wren sitting on the edge of the bath supping up water at the moment and singing out loud between sups. Wrens are tiny but they carry huge energy...They are incredibly industrious and fill the space with utter joy and have a fierce devotion to their homes. We are alike in that devotion.

Birds build their sanctuary one twig at a time. I continue to watch the wren as it flies from the bath to the birdhouse and back again to the ground as it gathers twigs, feathers, and everything it needs to build its home in a safe and secure environment. A place where it can sense life happening all around it.

This determined little architect is carrying on its sacred work building a home in the colorful birdhouse I hung in the maple tree. A birdhouse I used to have as an indoor decoration, but it somehow found its way outdoors years ago.

Tiny wrens flying with such certainty

toward water, shade, and refuge

knowing

and

trusting

there is safety here,

there is water here

there is life here.

It fills me with joy that the wrens have created a home they return to again and again just out my window in my maple tree in front and another birdhouse in the backyard. It is mirroring me in a way. We have gathered bits and pieces together over the years, building our home and garden and always tending to its beauty as we created our own sanctuary.

Our home is a welcoming place where our married sons return often with their families and our grandchildren have become friends with one another. It is a resting and gathering place where each person is free to be themselves. An inner sanctum where grandchildren negotiate sleepovers often while they are here.

It is a home filled with decades of soulful tending and presence. We want family, friends, and the local wildlife too, to feel loved, seen, important, and that they belong here. Love made visible.

Where laughter, conversations, warm teasing, and inside jokes dwell. Where baking, grilling, planting, and life happen. Where raccoons, coyote, rabbits, deer, and a stray cat borrow my garden path under the moonlight and use it as a corridor between the edge of wild woods and tame landscapes merge seemlessly. Food, water, and natural habitats are woven together in peaceful harmony.

A place for our grandchildren to run freely through the yard playing hide-and-seek, kickball, and blowing bubbles. A sidewalk out front invites walking, running, creating chalk masterpieces, and bike rides as school days end and summer begins. Beneath the shade of a beloved maple tree, branches made for climbing and anchoring a hammock offer a standing invitation to rest, dream, and play.

My home sanctuary

is not really about a yard.

It's about what the yard holds.

Safety.

Belonging.

Freedom.

Generations.

"This is a place where I am welcome."

On earth day this year, I hung a beautiful rain chain made of 21 colorful crystals and one bell on the end in my maple tree. It is a symbolic blessing count for each of my immediate family members. You can spot it hanging just above the wren's colorful birdhouse in the image.

There are 22 in my immediate family. The crystals: one for each beloved life catching light. The bell: is me - listening, ringing, calling them home. Because life is tender and fleeting and wildly beautiful all at once. Life is a gift. I am extremely grateful for everything in my life. Everything.

The seasons turn. Children grow. The flowers bloom and fade and return again. Dogs gray around the muzzle...as we, too, gray. Parents become memories carried in scent and song of the lily of the valley bells; tiny white bells on dark green foliage that magically grow in my garden. Flowers that remind me of my late mother that I never planted.

Our bodies tire after spreading 100 bags of mulch, mowing, trimming bushes, and planting flowers because they bring such joy to us. And somehow the years move both slowly and impossibly fast as we continue to tend to our families, homes, gardens, and our lives.

I laugh loudly, walk barefoot in the garden, and I cry openly. I drink the coffee, the tea, and lots of blessed water as I sit in the sanctuary of my home and garden witnessing life unfolding all around me. All are welcome.

I listen to the beautiful healing sounds of the wrens, the cardinals, the blue jays, the robins, hawks, the fountains, and the wind chimes. I play outdoors with my grandchildren because I want them to know the freedom and healing that nature provides.

I encourage them to be kind, honest, grateful, loving, forgiving, and to know they are loved beyond measure...always in all ways...no matter what. I teach them to be stewards of the land and to do no harm. I like to read what they write and display what they color and paint. We climb trees, practice yoga, and play together. (I am currently teaching the older ones to do headstand.) We hold and kiss our beloved Vizsla, Rosie. I rest when I am weary. This is a sacred and ordinary life.

Laughter helps hold it all without hardening. Not laughter that denies sorrow, but laughter that says: Even here, joy still lives. Joy keeps our hearts permeable. It helps us to stay open for everything that happens in our lives while we have lived long enough to know that everything changes.

We laugh together beneath the passing seasons, not because we expect life to stand still, but because love has taught us how to meet life fully.

Life at the edge of a woods.

I am a Wild Irish Rose.

Witness of wing, water,

wind, and woven light.

All are welcome.

Always in all ways.

My life reads like a well-loved garden. I do not seek perfection. I seek aliveness, authenticity, relationship, and meaning in all things. I am connected and grateful for all life has to offer...I may have grown the most from the most challenging times I have experienced. And yet I rise.

I am most fully myself in places where beauty and imperfection coexist naturally. Where things bloom. Things decay. Things reseed themselves. Paths shift. Wild things arrive. Light changes by the hour. I love to observe life around me. It is all beautiful.

I am a wild Irish rose living on the edge of the forest. Roses are never flawless. Thorns protect, petals bruise, blossoms open briefly and bravely anyway.

Wisdom resides within whilst loving myself as part of this ecosystem instead of demanding perfection, static, or untouched by life. It brings a very deep kind of peace.

Namaste, the light in me sees and honors the light in each and everyone of you.