Katharine Weinmann's Avatar

Katharine Weinmann

@awabisabilife.bsky.social

Writes poetry. Walks long distances. Finds beauty in life's imperfections. Photographs its shimmer. Longs to live in Italy. In the meantime, calls the Canadian prairies with her husband and dog, Walker, home. Blogs at www.awabisabilife.ca

21 Followers  |  19 Following  |  55 Posts  |  Joined: 15.11.2024  |  1.7275

Latest posts by awabisabilife.bsky.social on Bluesky

One Path "crossing the river of life"Mo Chu (mother river) Bhutan, October 19, 2025 "No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you.

One Path - A humble first attempt at putting into words the deep impressions from my journey to Bhutan, this year's long walk.

03.11.2025 14:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Ring a Bell โ€ฆ Take a Pause โ€ฆ Find Some Patience Ring a Bell ... Take a Pause ... Find Some Patience - Touching in with musings about my summer.

Ring a Bell โ€ฆ Take a Pause โ€ฆ Find Some Patience

Ring a Bell ... Take a Pause ... Find Some Patience - Touching in with musings about my summer.

06.10.2025 13:09 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Beyond Patience a red and many petalled zinnia Beyond Patience If I knew another word for patience,would it open me to the act?Perhaps something that invokes the patiencein the zinnias after first central flower has diedand before the next buds are formed.Something that speaks to the patience of winterwhile the field is greening more deeply every day.

Beyond Patience - I'm back with Friday's photo and poem feature. Too good to miss: the wise discernment between patience and presence.

11.07.2025 13:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Resist "One of the most important things to have learned in life is that choosing joy in a world rife with reasons for despair is a counter-cultural act of courage and resistance, choosing it not despite the abounding sorrow we barely survive but because of it, because joy โ€” like music, like love โ€” is one of those entirely unnecessary miracles of consciousness that give meaning to survival with its bright allegiance to the most alive part of us."

Resist - Choosing a week of joy, love, and beauty I restore harmony and make a courageous act of resistance. Join me.

07.07.2025 13:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
A Night With Noย Dawn The Big Self Watches the Small Self Look at her, checking her watch again,worried thereโ€™s not enough time. Notenough minutes or hours to do all the urgentor beautiful things she longs to doโ€”a list that unspools out of each secondโ€”all those things she is certain must be done.She how she squirms, how she bites her lip,

A Night With No Dawn - Friday's photo and poem feature. Today, a beauty from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, sending me my most recent poem-a-day.

27.06.2025 13:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Tiny Choices and Smallย Moments โ€œSo, what are you plans for the day?โ€ I asked Sig one morning last week, before he got too involved in monitoring our stocks. โ€œI havenโ€™t decided,โ€ he casually responded. Heading upstairs to get ready for the day, with a stop in the kitchen to warm up my coffee, I thought how wonderful, how privileged even, to have the freedom to decide your day.

Tiny Choices and Small Moments - An answered question, reading women writers, a visit with a friend, and war converge in this reflection on living a life that matters.

23.06.2025 13:01 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
The Crack "Cracks do not just let light in, they let world in. When we say cracks come with their own weather, we name their atmospheres of grief and astonishment, their humidity of longing, their winds that do not blow in straight lines. We name the business of becoming undone in ways that make new touch possible. We speak to the climates of feeling that resist tidy names, where sobbing might be a form of measurement, where disorientation is a form of orientation.

The Crack - Friday's photo and poem feature, today inspired by reading a post from Bayo Akomolafe.

20.06.2025 14:05 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Joy and Sadness ..."At the same moment, I experienced exactly the opposite emotion. The tears were at the same time tears of an immense sadnessโ€”a sadness at what weโ€™re doing to the earth, sadness about the people whom I had hurt in my life, and sadness too at my own mixed motives and selfishness. I hadnโ€™t known that two such contrary feelings (joy and sadness) could coexist.

Joy and Sadness

..."At the same moment, I experienced exactly the opposite emotion. The tears were at the same time tears of an immense sadnessโ€”a sadness at what weโ€™re doing to the earth, sadness about the people whom I had hurt in my life, and sadness too at my own mixed motives and selfishness.โ€ฆ

16.06.2025 20:26 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Saying Thank You a birthday memory repurposed, with thanks THANKS Listenwith the night falling we are saying thank youwe are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railingswe are running out of the glass roomswith our mouths full of food to look at the skyand say thank youwe are standing by the water thanking itstanding by the windows looking out…

Saying Thank You - Friday's photo and poem feature. Today, I was inspired by listening to Ada Limรณn recite poems at the recent Poetry and the Creative Mind gala.

13.06.2025 13:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Breathe and Create in a state of continual welcoming A few weeks ago, I wrote about my participation in a poetry writing half marathon. As preamble to this week's post, below is the prompt given for the 23rd hour, and the "list" poem I cobbled together from the book on my desk at dawn that Sunday morning, after 10 hours of writing 10 previous poems.

Breathe and Create - Reading and listening to Rick Rubin's The Creative Act inspired a half marathon poem and this post.

09.06.2025 13:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Come PRAYER Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more importantcalls for my attention โ€“ the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage I need to buy for the trip.Even now I can hardly sit here among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outsidealready screeching and banging. The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.

Come - Friday's photo and poem feature. Today, one from Marie Howe, the 2025 winner of the Pulitzer Poetry Prize freed up my thoughts and some words about Gaza.

06.06.2025 13:01 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
To Travel Is Toย Feel a tribute to Lisbon's favorite literary son, Fernando Pessoa The best way to travel, after all, is to feel,To feel everything in every way,To feel everything excessively,Because all things are, in truth, excessiveAnd all reality is an excess, a violence,An extraordinarily vivid hallucination. ~ Fernando Pessoa ~ This photo, taken three years ago while strolling in Lisbon the evening I arrived to acclimatize before walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino, is a modern homage to Portugal's man of letters, Fernando Pessaro.

To Travel Is To Feel - Friday's "late" photo and poem feature inspired by a quote by famous Portuguese writer, Fernando Pessoa.

30.05.2025 21:33 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Saudade A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about that quintessential Portuguese quality called "saudade." A bittersweet yearning...a tender sadness...the presence of absence evoked in fado music and singing, dance, poetry. Qualities represented by this photo I took in Andalusia five years ago. Last night, while eating dinner at our favorite Portuguese-Spanish influenced cafe, saudade stirred. Even before we entered, I felt waves of nostalgia for those times three years ago when eating in Portuguese cafes along the Camino, or in the tapas bars with Sig in Malaga, and that sweet match-box sized…

Saudade - Another post musing on how it feels and what it might be telling me.

26.05.2025 13:03 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Bragging Rights Early Sunday morning I completed my first half marathon. For twelve hours, from 7:00 pm Saturday night to 7:00 am Sunday morning, I joined hundreds of poets from around the world in writing a poem an hour for twelve or twenty-four. Hosted by Caitlin and Jacob Jans from Toronto, I opted for twelve. Having the choice of joining the first or the last half, I elected the latter, knowing my preference for writing in the dark stillness as the day begins or ends.

Bragging Rights - Claimed when I spent 12 consecutive hours writing a poem an hour in the annual global Poetry Marathon.

19.05.2025 13:01 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
The Presence of Theย Absence There is a word in Portuguese that has no direct equivalent in any other language: โ€œsaudade.โ€It is not just longing. It is more.It is longing mixed with melancholy, with expectation, with tenderness and with a gentle sadness. It is longing for something that was. . . or maybe never was.It is absence with the scent of memory.

The Presence of The Absence - Some reflections on the Portuguese Coastal Camino, fado and its essence, saudade.

16.05.2025 13:01 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
To Say Nothing But Thankย You TO SAY NOTHING BUT THANK YOU All day I try to say nothing but thank you,breathe the syllables in and out with every step Itake through the rooms of my house and outside intoa profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the gardenwhere the tulipsโ€™ black stamens shake in their crimson cups. I am saying thank you, yes, to this burgeoning spring…

To Say Nothing But Thank You - Friday's photo and poem feature. Today a beloved from the late Jeanne Lohmann. One which I discovered I posted a year ago. One which bears repeating. At least once.

18.04.2025 13:06 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Right On Time "When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaoshave the capacity to shift the entire systemto a higher order." Ilya Prigogene And this is what emerged in celebration of my birthday. Several small islands of coherence wherein "emotional density" (thanks to my friend Helen's blog for introducing the term), presence, being seen and heard, AND acknowledging life's inevitable one-way direction, became the criteria - anticipated and realized - for each gathering.

Right On Time - My response to turning 70.

14.04.2025 13:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
No One Toldย Me No one told meit would be like thisโ€”how growing olderis another passageof discoveryand that aging is onegrand transformation,and if some things becomelost along the way,many other means show upto bring me closerto the center of my heart. No one ever told meif whatever wonderwaits aheadis in another realm…

No One Told Me - Friday's photo and poem feature. Today, the perfect follow-up to Monday's "turning 70" post.

11.04.2025 13:13 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
So Many Gifts "Across the wisdom traditions - from Jung to Erikson, from ancient Hindu sages to modern developmental theorists like Rohr, Plotkin, and Fowler - there emerges a shared understanding of life's autumn-time that speaks in many tongues but carries a single breath... These cartographers of the soul's journey, though separated by centuries and cultures, all gesture toward a mysterious transformation in the later seasons of life.

So Many Gifts - Turning 70 and some of what it means for me.

07.04.2025 13:03 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Composting Hope ...sometimes hope looks like compost, slow, surprising, quietly transforming what was into what could be. So, maybe the best we can do is let ourselves be changed by love, by grief, by dirt under our fingernails, and by small, ordinary acts of grace. So, wherever you are today, may you remember that your smallness is not insignificance, that love really is fundamentally expressed in potato chips and text messages and a place at the table.

Composting - Friday's photo and poem feature. Kate Bowler and her podcast guest and friend, Jeff Chu, give me food for thought.

04.04.2025 13:06 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Itโ€™s All True โ€œAnger is always the bodyguard of our woundedness.ยญ Thereโ€™s the trauma, ยญthereโ€™s the anger, ยญthereโ€™s the rage, but healing is about moving through that. Not distancing, not distracting, but moving through it to that really fundamental sadness and hurt thatโ€™s beneath the anger.โ€ Buddhist teacher Lama Rod Owens in the Harvard Divinity School's newsletter A few decades ago, I sat in a week-long workshop with a teacher I'd long admired.

"It's All True" - How anger protects and responds to our deep yearnings, hurts, and sadness.

31.03.2025 13:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Making Spring "As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can. I won't give up until the Earth gives up." - Alice Walker "Indeed, to garden โ€” even merely to be in a garden โ€” is nothing less than a triumph of resistance against the merciless race of modern life, so compulsively focused on productivity at the cost of creativity, of lucidity, of sanity; a reminder that we are creatures enmeshed with the great web of being..." - Maria Popova…

Making Spring - Friday's photo and poem feature. Today, a collection of quotes inspiring hope, as does the coming of spring and Nature.

28.03.2025 13:01 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
This Spring soon... It's 7:00 am Sunday morning. I'm an early riser. Lately, too early as I've been plagued with a bout of early morning insomnia, waking around 3. Sometimes I toss a bit, listen to the slow and steady breath of Sig sleeping beside me and try to synch my breath with hopes of falling back to sleep. When my mind overrides that intention, I quietly rise, slip into my robe and slippers and head downstairs to read, or write, or take my place on my cushion, or stare out the window, wondering.

This Spring

soon... It's 7:00 am Sunday morning. I'm an early riser. Lately, too early as I've been plagued with a bout of early morning insomnia, waking around 3. Sometimes I toss a bit, listen to the slow and steady breath of Sig sleeping beside me and try to synch my breath with hopes ofโ€ฆ

24.03.2025 13:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Mindful Mindful Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking…

Mindful - Friday's photo and poem feature. Thanks to Parker Palmer for posting this perfect gem from Mary Oliver, and to my friend, Cate, whose gift inspired my photo.

21.03.2025 13:02 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Trusting the Threads grounded in Nature's altar I wondered if last Friday's photo and poem feature were simply too much for readers, as few opened the post, either here or on social media. Perhaps if I'd titled it, "I Am NOT Happy," and posted another photo, instead of using the title of Ilya Kaminsky's poem, "We Lived Happily during the War," with my photo of an actual Ukrainian door burned in the invasion, it might have evoked more curiosity and less reluctance.

Trusting the Threads - Reflections on writing past and present and some of what inspires mine.

17.03.2025 13:02 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
โ€œWe Lived Happily during theย Warโ€ Ukrainian doorsburned and shattered in the war started by Russia February 2022 We Lived Happily during the War And when they bombed other peopleโ€™s houses, we protestedbut not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I wasin my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house โ€” I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

We Lived Happily During the War - Friday's photo and poem feature. Today, the reposting of Ilya Kaminsky's powerful and prescient poem.

14.03.2025 13:05 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Rest Walker... we all fall into bed after a full day In yesterday's inbox, I received two emails that struck me as contrasting approaches to coping with the current global state of affairs. In one, subject line: Sanity Repair Kit, its author listed thirteen personal strategies to help her stay above despair. The second, the weekly love note from Christine Valters Paintner…

Rest - To reset our overwrought nervous systems, to access our inner wisdom, to resist the culture of busyness, to overcome the heartless cruelty of certain current rhetoric.

10.03.2025 13:01 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
An Email Sent to a Friend Beforeย Dawn Buds in Spain, March 2020(we know now the darkness that was soon to fall upon us all) My gosh...what sweetness to suddenly hear your voice and words singing on the radio this morning. My heart needed it all. Such heavy harrowing times.My words are stuck and stuffed like my head cold. Anyways...this moment a sweet one. Hope this finds you well.

An Email Sent to a Friend Before Dawn - Friday's photo and poem feature. My simple, in-the-moment gesture is the makings of today's poem.

07.03.2025 14:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
โ€œLightly my darlingโ€ฆโ€ Last week, I received a lovely anonymous response to this blog, originally written and posted three years ago. An unusual occurrence given the time lapse, it's lingered. Then, thinking about what to write for today's post, being tired from another viral infection and wrung out from the aftermath of the latest brutal undoings in the USA, I've accepted as gift the right timing of its reappearance and have chosen to repost it now.

"Lightly my darling..." - a recent comment to a three-year-old post the gift for re-reading and re-posting today.

03.03.2025 14:03 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Infinite Possibilities "The truth is โ€” the amount of days we have here is actually not so large. So if you have the opportunity to wake up tomorrow, to let this world age you and weather you and meet you where you are for even just one more golden minute โ€” I hope you show up for it. Do as much as you possibly can with your time here.

Infinite Possibilities - Friday's photo and poem feature. Today, words from Bianca Sparacino and my photo of spring welcome March's arrival.

28.02.2025 14:02 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 0    ๐Ÿ” 0    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0

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