"No Longer Forward or Behind"

No longer forward or behind I look in hope or fear;
but grateful, take the good I find, the best of now and hear.
I break my pilgrim staff, I lay aside the toiling oar;
the angel sought so far away I welcome at my door.

For all the jarring noise of life seems blending in a psalm,
and all the angles of its strife slow rounding into calm.
And so the shadows fall apart, and so the west winds play;
and all the windows of my heart I open to the day.

text by John Greenleaf Whittier

This is my new-again-and again-and again goal: to be Here Now. To live in the present. To be open to the beauty and goodness in my world. 'Cause I'm not at all thinking about how my good friend doesn't want to speak to me, not about how he hasn't spoken to me in a year, not about how I, today, told him that I would no longer keep my door open to him--oh, unlocked, but not open--all in an attempt to keep my boundaries clear, to ease the pain on my heart, O no, I am not thinking about that at all.

I am thinking about snow, and red wine, and hot sex, and fluffy knitting. Not all together.