Shine Bright
This weekend I traded in the blue sea for green fields. I headed back to my second home at Anna Tasca Lanza where I've been working for the past four years running food education programs. It's a magical place, rural Sicily. Especially there on a family estate among vineyards, orchards, and the most luscious ornamental garden I've ever seen. I spent the weekend repotting plants, weeding the garden, and picking greens from the veggie plot. My nails are ruined, my lips chapped from the sun, and my hands raw from the dirt.
It was a refreshing weekend, but also a moment of reflection. Normally this time of year the school would be full of eager participants, smells of heavenly food wafting from the kitchen, and a whole team of dedicated staff coming together around the table in the name of good food and good fun, in celebration of Sicily. Instead, empty, silent, echoing: no sign of the joys and pleasures of daily life that many of us still miss today, one year after the start of this pandemic.
Feeling the sun on my face, the heat on my skin, it revives me. It helps me get back into my skin, feel present, and assess myself and my surroundings. I need these check-ins. I need these moments of perspective, of beauty, of nature's wisdom to settle me through difficult times.
And let's just acknowledge, these are difficult times.
Since I can't bring you all here to Sicily to soak in the abundant sun and share my beautiful surroundings, I wanted to gift you some wise words from the extraordinary Mary Oliver. A reminder of the power of nature and the brilliance of the sun, who keeps rising even when the world seems to stop.
The Sun
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
Thank you. Thank you for reading, for questioning, for shining bright, and for showing up. How are you connecting to yourself and making sense of your surroundings? What do you need, other than the sun, to help you find your way in this busy world? I'd love to help you find out. If you want to connect, you know where to find me.
Sending sunshine,
Henna