We have the essentials: food enough, money enough, love, health. We know we have so much to be grateful for this week and always, and we can afford to be generous. This is from the preface to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass:
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."
The amazing photo above was taken by one of my favorites, Kristina Lishawa of Traverse City. Please go to her website, www.kristinalishawa.com, for more of her stunning work, or follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristinalishawaphotography. Thanks too to Jeff Wier of www.pointnorthphotography.com for the new trees and blue skies photo at the top of my webpage.
As always, thanks for reading, and I wish you the best this holiday week. If you would like to receive blog posts by email, please scroll to the bottom of any page on www.ordinaryvirtues.com and sign up.