We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.

~TS Eliot, The Cocktail Party

A Seeming Stillness

Breathe then, as if breathing for the first time,

as if remembering with what difficulty 

you came into the world, what strength it took 

to make that first impossible in-breath, 

into a cry to be heard by the world.

Your essence has always been 

that first vulnerability of being found, 

of being heard and of being seen,

and from the very beginning,

the one who has always needed, 

and been given, so much invisible help.

This is how you were when you first came 

into the world, this how you were when you took your 

first breath in this world, this is how you are now, 

all unawares, in your new body and your new life, 

this is the raw vulnerability of your 

every day, and this is how you will want to be, 

and be remembered, when you leave the world.

From ‘A Seeming Stillness’

David Whyte : Essentials

From Out the Cave

When you have been

at war with yourself

for so many years that

you have forgotten why,

when you have been driving

for hours and only

gradually begin to realize

that you have lost the way,

when you have cut

hastily into the fabric,

when you have signed

papers in distraction,

when it has been centuries

since you watched the sun set

or the rain fall, and the clouds,

drifting overhead, pass as flat

as anything on a postcard;

when, in the midst of these

everyday nightmares, you

understand that you could

wake up,

you could turn

and go back

to the last thing you

remember doing

with your whole heart:

that passionate kiss,

the brilliant drop of love

rolling along the tongue of a green leaf,

then you wake,

you stumble from your cave,

blinking in the sun,

naming every shadow

as it slips.

--Joyce Sutphen

From Straight Out of View

Short Stories

We are all short stories though we want to be novels

The long kind, the Russian kind,

War and Peace, any of the Dickens titles.

The thing is, we rarely get beyond seventy or eighty pages,

Making us novellas at best,

Not in the game with Methuselah,

Not living long enough to figure out the ending,

Instead having to settle for hoping

We and the characters in our story

Will all get out of this mess alive.

We don't.

I don't mean to spoil the ending, but there you are.

--Alberto Rios

 The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. 

The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.

--bell hooks

The greatest thing she ever said to me was in 1943 after the opening of Oklahoma!, when I suddenly had unexpected, flamboyant success for a work I thought was only fairly good, after years of neglect for work I thought was fine. I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. I talked to Martha. I remember the conversation well. It was in a Schrafft's restaurant over a soda. 

I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent but no faith that I could be. 

Martha said to me, very quietly, "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. As for you, Agnes, you have a peculiar and unusual gift, and you have so far used about one-third of your talent." 

"But," I said, "when I see my work I take for granted what other people value in it. I see only its ineptitude, inorganic flaws, and crudities. I am not pleased or satisfied." 

"No artist is pleased." 

"But then there is no satisfaction?"

"No satisfaction whatever at any time," she cried out passionately. "There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

― Agnes De Mille, Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham

For One Who is Exhausted

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,

Time takes on the strain until it breaks;

Then all the unattended stress falls in

On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.

Things you could take in your stride before

Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.

Gravity begins falling inside you,

Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.

And you are marooned on unsure ground.

Something within you has closed down;

And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.

The desire that drove you has relinquished.

There is nothing else to do now but rest

And patiently learn to receive the self

You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken

And sadness take over like listless weather.

The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.

Learn to linger around someone of ease

Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,

Having learned a new respect for your heart

And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

-- John O'Donohue

Excerpt from the blessing, 'For One Who is Exhausted,' from John's books:

Benedictus (Europe) / To Bless the Space Between Us (US)

Mysteries, Yes

Truly, we live with mysteries too

marvelous to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with

those who say "Look!" and laugh in

astonishment, and bow their heads.

~Mary Oliver

When autumn winds blow

Not one leaf remains

The way it was

--Togyu (Died 1749)

Gratitude

is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without and beside us. Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event, it is the deep, a-priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.

Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things must come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege; that we are miraculously, part of something, rather than nothing. Even if that something is temporarily pain or despair, we inhabit a living world, with real faces, real voices, laughter, the color blue, the green of the fields, the freshness of a cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape.

To see the full miraculous essentiality of the colour blue is to be grateful with no necessity for a word of thanks. To see fully, the beauty of a daughter’s face across the table, of a son's outline against the mountains, is to be fully grateful without having to seek a God to thank him. To sit among friends and strangers, hearing many voices, strange opinions; to intuit even stranger inner lives beneath calm surface lives, to inhabit many worlds at once in this world, to be a someone amongst all other someones, and therefore to make a conversation without saying a word, is to deepen our sense of presence and therefore our natural sense of thankfulness that everything happens both with us and without us, that we are participants and witness all at once.

Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness. We sit at the table as part of every other person’s world while making our own world without will or effort, this is what is extraordinary and gifted, this is the essence of gratefulness, seeing to the heart of privilege. Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets all other presences. 

Being unappreciative might mean we are simply not paying attention.

--David Whyte 

In CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. Revised Edition 

© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press 2020

Gratitude

Rain after days of sunshine.

Sunshine after days of rain.

The chance to move after sitting,

and the chance to curl up and not move.

Mist rising as the frost melts.

Leftovers.

The bitey puppy and the tottery old dog.

Not knowing how much time you have,

but knowing it is always limited.

Internet friends.

Neighbors.

The mandolin, which I play badly

and often. Hormone pills,

which mostly mute the hot flashes.

Wool socks. Rain boots.

All of the mixed blessings,

which is the only kind of blessing there is.

--Lynn Ungar Nov 2022

For When People Ask

I want a word that means

   okay and not okay,

  a word that means

devastated and stunned with joy.

   I want the word that says

  I feel it all all at once.

The heart is not like a songbird

   singing only one note at a time,

  more like a Tuvan throat singer

able to sing both a drone

   and simultaneously

  two or three harmonics high above it—

a sound, the Tuvans say,

   that gives the impression

  of wind swirling among rocks.

The heart understands the swirl,

   how the churning of opposite feelings

  weaves through us like an insistent breeze

leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,

   blesses us with paradox

  so we might walk more openly

into this world so rife with devastation,

   this world so ripe with joy.

 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (A Hundred Falling Veils)

 Generosity means giving, making sacrifices. It's something that people have been doing since who-knows-when. If we were to stop being generous or to stop making sacrifices for one another, the world wouldn't be able to last as a world  -  because even animals are generous with one another, just like human beings. They share their food with one another just like we do. They live together and eat together, feeding their offspring and caring for them. Take ants, for example: Each one helps carry food back to the nest. Other animals take food back to their hole or their hollow in a tree and eat it together.

We human beings live in families, in social situations. To the extent that we are involved with others, to the extent we make sacrifices for one another, beginning with the sacrifices that parents make for their children and continuing with those that we make for society at large. We live together by being generous, by making sacrifices for one another. Our hearts and our lives depend on one another, which is why we need to do this.

(Ajahn Maha Boowa)

Cherry Tomatoes

Suddenly it is August again, so hot,

breathless heat.

I sit on the ground

in the garden of Carmel,

picking ripe cherry tomatoes

and eating them.

They are so ripe that the skin is split,

so warm and sweet

from the attentions of the sun,

the juice bursts in my mouth,

an ecstatic taste,

and I feel that I am in the mouth of summer,

sloshing in the saliva of August.

Hummingbirds halo me there,

in the great green silence,

and my own bursting heart

splits me with life.

--Anne Higgins

From  At the Year's Elbow.

There Is Another Way

There is another way to enter an apple:

a worm’s way.

The small, round door

closes behind her. The world

and all its necessities

ripen around her like a room.

In the sweet marrow of a bone,

the maggot does not remember

the wingspread

of the mother, the green

shine of her body, nor even

the last breath of the dying deer.

I, too, have forgotten

how I came here, breathing

this sweet wind, drinking rain,

encased by the limits

of what I can imagine

and by a husk of stars.

--Pat Schneider

 “Self-love is not just about constantly giving yourself praise and telling yourself how awesome you are. It’s about loving the real you, the human you - the person who has feet of clay, who comes undone under criticism, who sometimes fails and disappoints others. It’s about making a commitment to yourself that you will stick by yourself - even if no one else does. That’s what I mean when I say you must love yourself as though your life depends on it, because quite simply, I know without a doubt that it does.”

~Anita Moorjani

Things to Think

Think in ways you've never thought before.

If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message

Larger than anything you've ever heard,

Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,

Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose

Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers

A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about

To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,

Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's

Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

--Robert Bly

Blackbirds

I am 52 years old, and have spent

truly the better part

of my life out-of-doors

but yesterday I heard a new sound above my head

a rustling, ruffling quietness in the spring air

and when I turned my face upward

I saw a flock of blackbirds

rounding a curve I didn’t know was there

and the sound was simply all those wings

just feathers against air, against gravity

and such a beautiful winning

the whole flock taking a long, wide turn

as if of one body and one mind.

How do they do that?

Oh if we lived only in human society

with its cruelty and fear

its apathy and exhaustion

what a puny existence that would be

but instead we live and move and have our being

here, in this curving and soaring world

so that when, every now and then,

mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives

and when, even more rarely,

we manage to unite and move together

toward a common good,

and can think to ourselves:

ah yes, this is how it’s meant to be.

-- Julie Cadwallader Staub

 To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. - Emily Dickinson

On Meditating, Sort Of

Meditation, so I’ve heard, is best accomplished

if you entertain a certain strict posture.

Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree.

So why should I think I could ever be successful?

Some days I fall asleep, or land in that

even better place — half asleep — where the world,

spring, summer, autumn, winter —

flies through my mind in its

hardy ascent and its uncompromising descent.

So I just lie like that, while distance and time

reveal their true attitudes: they never

heard of me, and never will, or ever need to.

Of course I wake up finally

thinking, how wonderful to be who I am,

made out of earth and water,

my own thoughts, my own fingerprints —

all that glorious, temporary stuff.

-- Mary Oliver (From Blue Horses)

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

- Mary Oliver

In order for me to write poetry that isn't political, 

I must listen to the birds

and in order to hear the birds

the warplanes must be silent

--Marwan Makhoul

For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,

of statistics

lie before us,

the steep climb

of everything, going up,

up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that,

they say,

are valleys, pastures,

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to

you and your children:

stay together

learn the flowers

go light

"For the Children" by Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island. © New Directions, 1974.

The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates not by building, but by hacking away.

--Alan Watts

The Quiet Listeners

Go into the woods

and tell your story

to the trees.

They are wise

standing in their folds of silence

among white crystals of rock

and dying limbs.

And they have time.

Time for the swaying of leaves,

the floating down,

the dust.

They have time for gathering

and holding the earth about their feet.

Do this.

It is something I have learned.

How they will bend down to you

so softly.

They will bend down to you

and listen.

--Laura Davies Foley

 Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention. 

Be astonished. 

Tell about it.

-Mary Oliver

Earthside

We are asked to arrive here, earthside,

To occupy every inch of the body we’re given,

To learn its language, its needs and gifts.

We are asked to use it as a compass

To harbour us in safety

And lead us through the wild.

We are asked to care for this place,

With the grit and grace of dirt on our hands.

We are asked to speak,

To give voice to the voiceless

And translate light to language,

To cast the widest net,

To include everything inside of it,

To crack the heart wide open

And never close it again.

When we are pulled apart by longing,

We are asked to keep showing up,

To follow this soft, insistent tether:

To become what we love,

To pour ourselves into the hands of the ancestors,

To be held by them like water,

To quench the mouths of our children,

To nourish them with who we become.

We are asked to belong, finally

To ourselves, to each other, to the land,

To our own shapeshifting shadows,

To our own threadbare, indelible light.

We are asked to belong to the old tales that brought us here

And to the new ones that will keep us alive,

We are asked to belong to the Great Turning Wave

Of this time and this place.

We are asked to punctuate our breath

with both sorrow & praise

We are asked to answer by becoming

Again and again the way.

--Emily Kedar

Tread softly! All the earth is holy ground

- Christina Rosetti

The Pond

August of another summer, and once again

I am drinking the sun

and the lilies again are spread across the water.

I know now what they want is to touch each other.

I have not been here for many years

during which time I kept living my life.

Like the heron, who can only croak, who wishes he

    could sing,

I wish I could sing.

A little thanks from every throat would be appropriate.

This is how it has been, and this is how it is:

All my life I have been able to feel happiness,

except whatever was not happiness,

which I also remember.

Each of us wears a shadow.

But just now it is summer again

and I am watching the lilies bow to each other,

then slide on the wind and the tug of desire,

close, close to one another,

Soon now, I'll turn and start for home.

And who knows, maybe I'll be singing.

--Mary Oliver

"Enlightenment is intimacy with all things." —Thirteenth-century Buddhist priest and writer Dōgen Zenji

 “I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.”

― Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior

On the Longest Day of the Year

There is comfort in knowing

that every year

since the earth was made

there has been

a longest day of the year—

a day when half of all life

wakes to an abundance of light

and then in that moment

of greatness leans again

toward the dark.

There is comfort in knowing

the light comes, the light leaves,

the light comes, the light leaves,

comfort in knowing

all the light that is

reaches toward us,

whether we can see it or not.

It is simply a matter

of staying out of our own way,

and if we can’t do that,

well, that is what patience is for.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Yes

It could happen any time, tornado,

earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.

Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That’s why we wake

and look out––no guarantees

in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,

like right now, like noon,

like evening.

- William Stafford

I open the windows

What I wanted

wasn’t to let in the wetness.

That can be mopped.

 

Nor the cold.

There are blankets.

 

What I wanted was

the siren, the thunder, the neighbor,

the fireworks, the dog bark.

 

Which of them didn’t matter?

 

Yes, this world is perfect,

all things as they are.

 

But I wanted

not to be

the one sleeping soundly, on a soft pillow,

clean sheets untroubled,

dreaming there still might be time,

 

while this everywhere crying.

--Jane Hirshfield

Memory Sack

That first cry opens the earth door. 

We join the ancestor road. 

With our pack of memories 

Slung slack on our backs 

We venture into the circle 

Of destruction, 

Which is the circle 

Of creation 

And make more-

--Joy Harjo

Some Questions You Might Ask

Is the soul solid, like iron?

Or is it tender and breakable, like

the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?

Who has it, and who doesn’t?

I keep looking around me.

The face of the moose is as sad

as the face of Jesus.

The swan opens her white wings slowly.

In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.

One question leads to another.

Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?

Like the eye of a hummingbird?

Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?

Why should I have it, and not the anteater

who loves her children?

Why should I have it, and not the camel?

Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?

What about the blue iris?

What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?

What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?

What about the grass?

--Mary Oliver

 Death is love's sister, the sister with the shadowed face. 

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Before spring

Bless the buds that have yet to open,

the bare branches turning red.

Bless the green noses of bulbs

as they push through the soil,

and the raucous starlings 

in their tree conventions.

Bless the quince that blooms early--

no one wants its fruit. Bless

the days of rain and the days of fog,

the mud and the mess of it.

Bless the first dandelions, raising

brave, unwelcome, golden heads.

Bless this time when the world

is not yet beautiful, but you

can smell change in the air.

--Lynn Ungar

I don’t ask for the sights in front of me to change, 

only the depth of my seeing.

– Mary Oliver

It is said that before entering the sea

a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,

from the peaks of the mountains,

the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,

she sees an ocean so vast,

that to enter

there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.

The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.

To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk

of entering the ocean

because only then will fear disappear,

because that’s where the river will know

it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,

but of becoming the ocean.

-- Kahlil Gibran

My grandma was a seamstress 

before she left this world.

Now she stitches together stars

that long to be

part of a constellation.

In the right moonlight

I can spot her up there

mending all the loneliness

in the universe.

--Andrea Gibson

Beginners

Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

“From too much love of living,

Hope and desire set free,

Even the weariest river

Winds somewhere to the sea -“

But we have only begun

To love the earth.

We have only begun

To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?

- so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?

- we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,

only begun to envision

how it might be

to live as siblings with beast and flower,

not as oppressors.

Surely our river

cannot already be hastening

into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot

drag, in the silt,

all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet -

there is too much broken

that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other

that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know

the power that is in us if we would join

our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must

complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

--Denise Levertov

 No story can contain you.

--Ivan M. Granger

Evening

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors

which it passes to a row of ancient trees. You look,

and soon these two worlds both leave you,

one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,

leaving you, not really belonging to either,

not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,

not so unswervingly given to the eternal as

that thing that turns to a star each night and climbs-

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads) 

your own life, timid and standing high and growing, 

so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out, 

one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

--Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly

Original German:

Der Abend wechselt langsam die Gewänder,

die ihm ein Rand von alten Bäumen hält;

du schaust: und von dir scheiden sich die Länder,

ein himmelfahrendes und eins, das fällt;

und lassen dich, zu keinem ganz gehörend,

nicht ganz so dunkel wie das Haus, das schweigt,

nicht ganz so sicher Ewiges beschwörend wie das,

was Stern wird jede Nacht und steigt -

und lassen dir (unsäglich zu entwirrn) dein Leben

bang und riesenhaft und reifend, so daß es,

bald begrenzt und bald begreifend, abwechselnd 

Stein in dir wird und Gestirn.

There is deep beauty in not averting our gaze. No matter how hard it is, no matter how heartbreaking it can be. It is about presence. It is about bearing witness.

- Terry Tempest Williams

Thank You

If you find yourself half naked 

and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing, 

again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says 

you are the air of the now and gone, that says 

all you love will turn to dust, 

and will meet you there, do not 

raise your fist. Do not raise 

your small voice against it. And do not 

take cover. Instead, curl your toes 

into the grass, watch the cloud 

ascending from your lips. Walk 

through the garden’s dormant splendor. 

Say only, thank you. 

Thank you. 

From Against Which. Copyright © 2006 by Ross Gay.

Whoever now makes himself bigger, freer and more human in his own existence, is doing his part toward peace, — as yet it must be worked at in an inward direction, not until a few have it all big and ready within them can it let itself be brought into the world.

--Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters, 1892-1910

It’s still possible

It’s still possible to fully understand

you have always been the place

where the miracle has happened:

that you have been since your birth,

the bread given and the wine lifted,

the change witnessed and the change itself,

that you have secretly been, all along,

a goodness that can continue

to be a goodness to itself.

It’s still possible in the end

to realize why you are here 

and why you have endured, 

and why you might have suffered 

so much, so that in the end, 

you could witness love, miraculously 

arriving from nowhere, crossing 

bravely as it does, out of darkness, 

from that great and spacious stillness 

inside you, to the simple, 

light-filled life of being said.

…

--David Whyte

Excerpt From STILL POSSIBLE

in ‘Still Possible’

Many Rivers Press Jan 1st 2022

the mississippi river empties into the gulf

and the gulf enters the sea and so forth,

none of them emptying anything,

all of them carrying yesterday

forever on their white tipped backs,

all of them dragging forward tomorrow.

it is the great circulation

of the earth’s body, like the blood

of the gods, this river in which the past

is always flowing. every water

is the same water coming round.

everyday someone is standing on the edge

of this river, staring into time,

whispering mistakenly:

only here. only now.

--Lucille Clifton

Life beckons us as a flicker. A tendril. A corner of darkness. A bell. A spark of the soul. And curiosity propels us to follow.

ROSE ZONETTI

The Journey

Above the mountains 

the geese turn into

the light again

painting their

black silhouettes

on an open sky.

Sometimes everything 

has to be

inscribed across 

the heavens

so you can find 

the one line

already written 

inside you.

Sometimes it takes 

a great sky

to find that

first, bright

and indescribable

wedge of freedom

in your own heart.

Sometimes with

the bones of the black

sticks left when the fire 

has gone out

someone has written 

something new

in the ashes

of your life.

You are not leaving,

even as the light 

fades quickly now,

in my eyes

you are always 

arriving.

--David Whyte : Essentials

Many Rivers Press. January. 2020

For Warmth

I hold my face in my two hands.

No, I am not crying. 

I hold my face in my two hands 

to keep the loneliness warm—

two hands protecting, 

two hands nourishing, 

two hands preventing 

my soul from leaving me 

in anger.

 

by Thich Nhat Hanh, written after the bombing of Ben Tre, Vietnam when an American military man made the comment, "We had to destroy the town in order to save it." 

From the book, Call Me By My True Names

The whole notion of reciprocity is the idea that every being has a gift. But that gift and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. "The strawberry was given the gift of juicy red sweetness; it was also given the responsibility to feed certain elements in the community. So asking how we participate in reciprocity is asking “what is our responsibility”—but it’s also asking “what is our gift?” What is the gift of the human people? That’s what we’re called to give in reciprocity, in return for everything that we have been given, more often than not in return for everything we have taken. What is it that we have to give back? The reason I love to think about that in terms of gift and responsibility is that each of us has a different gift. As a parent, as a teacher, as an artist, as a gardener—whatever your gift is, we’re called to give it in return for everything that we’ve been given. 

- Robin Wall Kimmerer

An environmentalist friend wrote to me feeling depressed and overwhelmed with all of the bad news, especially after seeing my photographs of birds filled with plastic. Her sentence that broke my heart was: "I think it's generally difficult once you know how hopeless things seem."

In this regard, the importance of connecting with beauty cannot be overstated. If we are going to face and acknowledge the darkness--as we must--then let us also face and integrate the light: the immense, astonishing miracle we are all part of. In every moment, at every scale from the microscopic to the cosmic, our world and our own lives are impossibly magnificent and complex artworks, or mandalas, or waveforms, or whatever the right word is-- being created in realtime by an unknowable artist. Our very existence, right here and now, is a mystery beyond all mysteries, beyond what any words could express. The gift of consciousness is the most magical and valuable thing imaginable, and in that way every one of us has won the lottery of the Universe.

When we can contain these experiences in balance: all of the bad news, the destruction, loss, suffering, etc., AND the vast beauty of our world and our own selves, then we become whole. And in that place we stand in our full creative power to shine our light, to shift the energetic field, to change the stories that will shape the future. 

--Chris Jordan

The Cure for It All

Go gently today, don’t hurry

or think about the next thing. Walk

with the quiet trees, can you believe

how brave they are—how kind? Model your life

after theirs. Blow kisses

at yourself in the mirror

especially when

you think you’ve messed up. Forgive

yourself for not meeting your unreasonable

expectations. You are human, not

God—don’t be so arrogant.

Praise fresh air

clean water, good dogs. Spin

something from joy. Open

a window, even if

it’s cold outside. Sit. Close

your eyes. Breathe. Allow

the river

of it all to pulse

through eyelashes

fingertips, bare toes. Breathe in

breathe out. Breathe until

you feel

your bigness, until the sun

rises in your veins. Breathe

until you stop needing

anything

to be different.

--Julia Fehrenbacher

To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they're too exhausted to be any longer. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out, to become speedily found when they are lost. But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honour what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.

~ Heidi Priebe