The farthest star and the mud at our feet are family

I am a bit under the weather, home with a chest cold. Although I intended to write a reflection for today  (on what I am not sure), instead I am reading and gazing out the window at the unremittingly gray sky. Autumn is nearly gone, the trees are now almost barren on our mountainside. The world is feeling a little smaller, a little more closed in on itself. Winter is not yet here, but almost.

Our friend Karen in Tennessee sent this other day, from a book by Mary Oliver, Winter Hours:

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"I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves- we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other’s destiny."