Profound to me.

While practicing yoga outside yesterday morning, I was in trikonasana (triangle pose where the body forms many different triangles) and noticed three birds flying high in the sky. I thought to myself how wonderful it would be to just get up and fly.  It made me think back to when I was reading Anne Lamott's book Traveling Mercies and I realized that while I wouldn't want to sky dive, I would like to go paragliding.  

Later on at Z1's tennis class, I began to read Lift by Kelly Corrigan.  This book actually caused me a lot of angst because I first read about it in some random magazine I was reading while Z1 was participating in a library program.  I couldn't remember the title nor the author--only the way it looked and that it was a non-fictional book that I *knew* I would enjoy because I usually enjoy those kinds of books.  I spent almost an hour searching the web with not much to go on until finally . . . I found it.  Don't ask me how.  

Anyway, I opened the book and it starts off: "All things want to fly." 

On Monday at the children's library I found a wonderful treasure of a book:  The Wonderful Happens by Cynthia Rylant.  

[quote]From Publishers Weekly

Like the lyrics to The Sound of Music's "My Favorite Things," Rylant's picture-book list of what is wonderful in the world includes both raindrops and roses. The sweet, rhythmic text is both cheery and unabashedly sentimental. It begins with basic bread: "In a little kitchen/ someone butters bread,/ wonderful bread./ the earth grew wheat,/ the wheat made flour,/ and the wonderful happened:/ bread." Rylant sets up a premise that conveys nature's cause and effect: bread comes from flour, birds from eggs, roses from seeds. Dowley frames her illustrations with homey, quiltlike borders in simple flowered or geometric patterns. Branches of a peach tree teem with bees, a butterfly and a clone of the bright bluebird seen in Disney's Cinderella. Then abruptly, in the middle of a full-bleed spread of a blue sky dotted with a single yellow star, the text asks, "Did you know/ there was a time/ when you weren't anywhere?" Setting aside how puzzling this question might be to a child and that her answer goes against the simple logic of the first three-quarters of the book, Rylant suggests that children just happen ("you happened/ like bread, like a bird, like rain,/.../ the wonderful happened,/ the wonderful is you/ growing like a red red rose." Unfortunately, despite its feel-good appeal and images, the book lacks a coherent vision. All ages. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. [/quote]

I agree with the summary of the book to a tee but I still found it beautiful because I think in a lot of ways, it mirrors the way we think . . . things don't always seem to have a clear connection.  Like bread doesn't connect to a bird which doesn't connect to my children.  At least not apparently.  But they are all connected.  

 

It's all connected.  And that is profound to me.  

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