I Heart Macro 73

reaching this season

grateful for a life that’s blessed

my heart overflows

This coming Wednesday evening begins the festival of Sukkot. It is often referred to as z'man simchateinu, the season of our joy. It is the Jewish harvest festival that Thanksgiving in the United States is based on, a holiday of gratitude for the abundance we experience in our lives.  I've been watching the squirrels, chipmunks and birds feasting as they prepare for winter. It is amazing how much food nature provides for them. Sadly, although there is plenty of food grown in our world, it isn't available to everyone and neither is clean water.

there are more

empty bowls and swollen bellies

than a comfortable body can fathom

the inequities of food and clean water

boggle the mind sink a compassionate heart

like stone in an endless sea of tears

to give a little is never enough

still it is something

There is a joke, (was a joke) in my family that I can't bake bread. It is true, in the past every time I would attempt to bake challah for Shabbat or for holidays it would just be hard and flat. For a long time I gave up. This year was different. I made bread; really delicious (according to my family) challah and it rose higher than I could have hoped. Ok it isn't perfectly round as a traditional Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur challah should be, but it was close. During Yom Kippur, our rabbi encouraged us to contemplate ways we could be more supportive to our shul community, the greater local community and the world community. As my feet crunched acorns and leaves scattered on the road this morning, I thought about his challenge, I thought about the bread I baked. If I could get bread to rise this year, perhaps this would be a good year to actively raise money to help feed hungry people too! 

On October 26th, I will be walking to raise funds for hunger with our interfaith community for the Nashua CROP Walk. As long time followers of this blog know, it wasn't many years ago that I was in a wheelchair most days, and while at night I still need assistance walking up the steps to bed, with good medication, mediation and medical care, most days I walk just like the average person. I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am for the blessing of walking on my own two feet in this beautiful world. Both last summer and this one I've hiked mountains, surely I can walk a few city blocks to help feed hungry people. To achieve this, I need your help! This is the 30th anniversary of our local CROP Walk. I figure if there are over well over 1000 people who read my blog, surely, thirty of you will donate $10 or, sixty could donate $5 to assist me in reaching a modest goal of $300 over the next three weeks? 

    ...to give a little is never enough still it is something. 

I hope you will join me on this journey as our community takes steps to raise funds toward ending hunger-- every dollar raised will make a real impact! Please open your heart and pockets and donate by clicking this link.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Welcome to Week Seventy-Three of

I Heart Macro

"Pure awareness transcends thinking... It allows you to look at the world once again with open eyes. And when you do so, a sense of wonder and quiet contentment begins to reappear in your life."~Mark Williams and Danny Pennman, from Mindfulness An Eight-Week Plan For Finding Peace In A Frantic World

It is time for YOU to share the love up-close with YOUR

I Heart Macro offerings!

<center> <a href="http://www.shinethedivinecreativityisaspiritualpractice.com/" target="_blank"><img alt="Shine the Divine" src=" http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5024/5613077984_0632a92989_o.jpg"/></a></center>


Enjoy slowing down with your camera, paying full attention, observing beauty and curiosities many people pass right by. Your generosity of spirit and keen eyes may open the door to miniscule miracles and mirth others would not have access to otherwise. Feel free to include poetry, prose and thoughts your macro photo or series inspire(s) in you. Writing is completely optional for participation. Straight out of the camera (SOC), edited, color, black and white; anything goes as long as you bring the viewer near to whatever it is that drew your heart's attention and "woke you up" to full presence.

Please link back to my blog either using the button provided or by linking the words "I Heart Macro" back to my blog with this link: shinethedivinecreativityisaspiritualpractice.com. By sharing the link, visitors to your blog will learn about this meme and have a chance to participate as well if they so choose. 

Visit each other...

S  p  r  e  a  d  the  LOVE. Thanks :-)

linking to:

real toads

haiku friday

nature notes

makro montag

macro monday 2

skywatch friday

poetry pantry

today's flowers

weekend reflections

reconnect with nature

our world tuesday

haiku my heart
ein stuk himmel