Daily Meditation

~ Featured Quote ~

It may take a little self-discipline.
Be simple, be kind, stay rested.
Attend to your inner health and happiness.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

More Inspiration

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

To Risk

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and
dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To live is to risk dying,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because
the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing,
has nothing, is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow,
But he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live.
Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.

Leo Buscaglia (1924-1998), American author and a professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Southern California

Monday, March 4, 2024

It Felt Love

How did the rose
Ever open its heart
And give to this world
All its beauty?
It felt the encouragement of light
Against its being,
Otherwise,
We all remain
Too frightened

Hafiz

Still Water

We can make our minds
so like still water
that beings gather about us,
that they may see,
it may be,
their own images,
and so live for a moment
with a clearer,
perhaps even with a fiercer life
because of our quiet.

William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939), Irish poet, dramatist and writer, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature

Sunday, March 3, 2024

The Most Important Thing

I am making a home inside myself. A shelter
of kindness where everything
is forgiven, everything allowed—a quiet patch
of sunlight to stretch out without hurry,
where all that has been banished
and buried is welcomed, spoken, listened to—released.

A fiercely friendly place I can claim as my very own.

I am throwing arms open
to the whole of myself—especially the fearful,
fault-finding, falling apart, unfinished parts, knowing
every seed and weed, every drop
of rain, has made the soil richer.

I will light a candle, pour a hot cup of tea, gather
around the warmth of my own blazing fire. I will howl
if I want to, knowing this flame can burn through
any perceived problem, any prescribed
perfectionism,
any lying limitation, every heavy thing.

I am making a home inside myself
where grace blooms in grand and glorious
abundance, a shelter of kindness that grows
all the truest things.

I whisper hallelujah to the friendly
sky. Watch now as I burst into blossom.

Julia Fehrenbacher

The Guest House

“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Rumi

During a crisis,
the wise build bridges
and the foolish build dams.

Nigerian Proverb

Saturday, March 2, 2024

You always own the option of having no opinion.

There is never any need to get worked up

or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control.

These things are not asking to be judged by you.

Leave them alone.

Marcus Aurelius

The Arrow and The Song

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), American poet and educator who gave poetry higher standing within American society than it had enjoyed ever before. His works include Paul Revere’s Ride, The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was the first American to translate Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Friday, March 1, 2024

Golden Slumbers (1603)

Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise;
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby,
Rock them, rock them, lullaby.

Care is heavy, therefore sleep you,
You are care, and care must keep you;
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby,
Rock them, rock them, lullaby.

Thomas Dekker, 1603

Golden Slumbers (1969)

Once there was a way
To get back homeward
Once there was a way
To get back home

Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby

Golden slumbers fill your eyes
Smiles await you when you rise

Sleep pretty darling, do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby

Once there was a way
To get back homeward
Once there was a way
To get back home

Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby

Paul McCartney, 1969

Listen to the MUSTEN’TS

Listen to the MUSTN’TS, child,
Listen to the DON’TS
Listen to the SHOULDN’TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WONT’S
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me-
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be

Shel Silverstein

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Listen… and incline the ear of your heart.

St. Benedict

You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.

M. Scott Peck

This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.

John O’Donohue (1956-2008), Irish poet, author, priest, and Hegelian philosopher

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

One of the deepest longings of the human soul is to be seen.

John O’Donohue (1956-2008), Irish poet, author, priest, and Hegelian philosopher

I Go Down To The Shore

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
“Excuse me, I have work to do.”

Mary Oliver

Love yourself. Then forget it.
Then, love the world.

Mary Oliver

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Earth Verse

Wide enough to keep you looking
Open enough to keep you moving
Dry enough to keep you honest
Prickly enough to make you tough
Green enough to go on living
Old enough to give you dreams

Gary Snyder

Monday, February 26, 2024

I thank You God for most this amazing  day:
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes. 

e.e. cummings

Sunday, February 25, 2024

The miracle is that the honey is always there,
right under your nose,
only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it.
The worst is not dying but being blind,
blind to the fact that everything about life
is in the nature of the miraculous.

Henry Miller (1891-1980)

Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
For poems are not words, after all,
but fires for the cold,
ropes let down to the lost,
something as necessary as bread
in the pockets of the hungry.

Mary Oliver

Saturday, February 24, 2024

The music is not in the notes,
but in the silence between.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Ten Thousand Flowers in Spring

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
A cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
This is the best season of your life.

Wu-men (1183-1260), classical Zen poet

We will want the good that is in us all,
even in the worst of us,
to flower and to grow.
But first of all we shall want sunlight;
nothing much can grow in the dark.
Meditation is our step out into the sun.

Bill W. (William Griffith Wilson, 1895-1971), co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)

Friday, February 23, 2024

My grandmother once gave me a tip:
In difficult times, you move forward in small steps.
Do what you have to do, but little by little.
Don’t think about the future, or what may happen tomorrow.
Wash the dishes.
Remove the dust.
Write a letter.
Make a soup.
You see?
You are advancing step by step.
Take a step and stop.
Rest a little.
Praise yourself.
Take another step.
Then another.
You won’t notice, but your steps will grow more and more.
And the time will come when you can think about the future without crying.

Elena Mikhalkova

The Hippo

The hippo floats in swamp serene,
some emerged, but most unseen.

Seeing all and only blinking,
Who knows what this beast is thinking.

Gliding, and of judgment clear,
Letting go and being here.

Seeing all, both guilt and glory,
Only noting. But that’s MY story.

I sit here hippo-like and breathe,
While inside I storm and seethe.

Would that I were half equanimous
As that placid hippopotamus.

Steven Hickman

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Don’t let one cloud obliterate the whole sky.

Anais Nin

You cannot save people. You can only love them.

Anais Nin

As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom,
I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.

Nelson Mandela

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), British mathematician, philosopher, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic philosophy.

Unconditional

Each condition I flee from pursues me,
Each condition I welcome transforms me
And becomes itself transformed
Into its radiant jewel-like essence.
I bow to the one who has made it so,
Who has crafted this Master Game;
To play it is purest delight –
To honor its form, true devotion.

Jennifer Paine Welwood

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away

and become something better.

It’s about befriending who we are already.

Pema Chödrön

If you can fall in love again and again,
if you can forgive as well as forget,
if you can keep from growing sour,
surly, bitter and cynical…
you’ve got it half licked.

Henry Miller (1891-1980)

Monday, February 19, 2024

If we think of defeat, that is what we will get.
If we are undecided, nothing will happen for us.
We must just pick something great to do and do it.
Never do we think of failure at all,
for as we think now, that is what we will get.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Learn to be alone and like it.
There is nothing more freeing and empowering
than learning to like your own company.

Mandy Hale

Sunday, February 18, 2024

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow.
It goes among things that change.
But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford

In my sleep I dreamed this poem

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

Mary Oliver

Saturday, February 17, 2024

Whatever course you decide upon,
there is always someone to tell you
that you are wrong.
There are always difficulties arising
which tempt you to believe that your critics are right.
To map out a course of action
and follow it to an end requires courage.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century

It’s good to leave each day behind,

like flowing water, free of sadness,

yesterday is gone and its tale told,

today new seeds are growing.

Rumi

Hokusai Says

Hokusai says look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing.

He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat
yourself as long as it is interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.

He says keep praying.

He says everyone of us is a child,
everyone of us is ancient,
everyone of us has a body.
He says everyone of us is frightened.
He says everyone of us has to find
a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive–
shells, buildings, people, fish,
mountains, trees, wood is alive.
Water is alive.

Everything has its own life.

Everything lives inside us.

He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn’t matter if you draw,
or write books. It doesn’t matter
if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn’t matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.

It matters that you feel.

It matters that you notice.

It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.

He says don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid.

Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.

Roger S Keyes

Friday, February 16, 2024

Four Keys to Happiness

Friendship towards the joyful,

Compassion towards the suffering,

Happiness towards the pure, and

Undisturbed towards the impure.

Upanishads

Look Well to This Day

Look to this day,
for it is life – the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities
and realities of your existence:
the bliss of growth,
the glory of action,
the splendor of beauty.
For yesterday is already a dream
and tomorrow is only a vision;
but today, well-lived,
makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
Such is the salutation of the dawn.

Kālidāsa, classical Sanskrit scholar considered one of ancient India’s greatest poets and playwrights. He lived during the 4th and 5th centuries CE.

Thursday, February 15, 2024

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love—whether we call it friendship or family or romance—is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.

James Baldwin

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.

Jane Austen

Though we may be learned by another’s knowledge, we can never be wise but by our own experience.

Michel de Montaigne

Sometimes it is a good choice not to choose at all.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), French-Occitan author, philosopher, and statesman, who is considered to be among the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance (1500 -1600), which was the cultural rebirth of Europe

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Love is the sweet expression of life.
It is the supreme content of life.
Love is the force of life, powerful and sublime.
The flower of life blooms in love
and radiates love all around.
Life expresses itself through love.
The stream of life is a wave on the ocean of love.
Life is expressed in the waves of love,
and the ocean of love flows in the waves of life.
What a comfort love brings to the heart.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

At the heart of every winter,
there is a quivering spring;
and behind the veil of each night
there is a smiling dawn.

Kahlil Gibran

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life,
sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds,
great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2

What Are Heavy?

What are heavy? Sea-sand and sorrow;
What are brief? Today and tomorrow;
What are frail? Spring blossoms and youth;
What are deep? The ocean and truth.

Christina Rossetti (1830 –1894), English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children’s poems

Monday, February 12, 2024

Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

Not many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury; nowadays it’s often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize.

Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

Us Two

Wherever I am, there’s always Pooh,
There’s always Pooh and Me.
Whatever I do, he wants to do,
“Where are you going today?” says Pooh:
“Well, that’s very odd ‘cos I was too.
Let’s go together,” says Pooh, says he.
“Let’s go together,” says Pooh.

“What’s twice eleven?” I said to Pooh.
(“Twice what?” said Pooh to Me.)
“I think it ought to be twenty-two.”
“Just what I think myself,” said Pooh.
“It wasn’t an easy sum to do,
But that’s what it is,” said Pooh, said he.
“That’s what it is,” said Pooh.

“Let’s look for dragons,” I said to Pooh.
“Yes, let’s,” said Pooh to Me.
We crossed the river and found a few-
“Yes, those are dragons all right,” said Pooh.
“As soon as I saw their beaks I knew.
That’s what they are,” said Pooh, said he.
“That’s what they are,” said Pooh.

“Let’s frighten the dragons,” I said to Pooh.
“That’s right,” said Pooh to Me.
“I’m not afraid,” I said to Pooh,
And I held his paw and I shouted “Shoo!
Silly old dragons!”- and off they flew.

“I wasn’t afraid,” said Pooh, said he,
“I’m never afraid with you.”

So wherever I am, there’s always Pooh,
There’s always Pooh and Me.
“What would I do?” I said to Pooh,
“If it wasn’t for you,” and Pooh said: “True,
It isn’t much fun for One, but Two,
Can stick together, says Pooh, says he.
“That’s how it is,” says Pooh.

AA Milne

Sunday, February 11, 2024

The Infinite

The Infinite always is silent:
It is only the Finite speaks.
Our words are the idle wave-caps
On the deep that never breaks.
We may question with wand of science,
Explain, decide and discuss;
But only in meditation
The Mystery speaks to us.

John Boyle O’Reilly (1844-1890), Irish poet, journalist, author, activist, and, when he moved to Boston, an abolitionist

DEAR YOU

Dear you,
You who always have
so many things to do
so many places to be
your mind spinning like
fan blades at high speed
each moment always a blur
because you’re never still.
I know you’re tired.
I also know it’s not your fault.
The constant brain-buzz is like
a swarm of bees threatening
to sting if you close your eyes.
You’ve forgotten something again.
You need to prepare for that or else.
You should have done that differently.
What if you closed your eyes?
Would the world fall
apart without you?
Or would your mind
become the open sky
flock of thoughts
flying across the sunrise
as you just watched and smiled.

Kaveri Patel

Saturday, February 10, 2024

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere; it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.

Black Elk (1863-1950)

I Worried

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

Mary Oliver

Friday, February 9, 2024

For a new beginning

In out of the way places of the heart
Where your thoughts never think to wander
This beginning has been quietly forming
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire
Feeling the emptiness grow inside you
Noticing how you willed yourself on
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the grey promises that sameness whispered
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

John O’Donohue

INNER PEACE

If you can start the day without caffeine,

If you can get going without pep pills,

If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,

If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,

If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,

If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,

If you can overlook when those you love take it out on you when, through no fault of yours, something goes wrong,

If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,

If you can ignore a friend’s limited education and never correct him,

If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend,

If you can face the world without lies and deceit,

If you can conquer tension without medical help,

If you can relax without liquor,

If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,

If you can say honestly that deep in your heart you have no prejudice against creed, color, religion or politics,

Then, my friend, you are probably your family dog!

Author unknown

Thursday, February 8, 2024

Compassion

Have compassion for everyone you meet,
even if they don’t want it.
What appears bad manners, an ill temper
or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears
have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
down there where the spirit meets the bone.

Miller Williams (1930-2015), an American contemporary poet, as well as a university professor, translator and editor. He produced over 25 books and won several awards for his poetry.

God gave us the gift of life;

it is up to us to give ourselves

the gift of living well.

Voltaire (1694-1778), French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, satirist, and historian. He was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Love feels no burden,

thinks nothing of trouble,

attempts what is above its strength,

pleads no excuse of impossibility…

It is therefore able to undertake all things.

St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Italian Dominican friar and priest, and an influential philosopher and theologian

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist, holocaust survivor, author of Man’s Search for Meaning

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Brackets

I’d never mastered
those little pockets of time
before an event,
like when to leave the apartment
to get to my first appointment,
or when to leave the office
to get home.

This quandary of mine
started early.
The corner library
mesmerized me.
So many books!
From Green Eggs and Ham
to Madeline –
So much to read!
So much abundance!

I’ve been like the diner
at the buffet table,
who fills her plate
to overflowing,
her eyes bigger
than her stomach,
and the hoarder
who keeps buying
stuff, whose closets
overflow to everywhere.

Closets don’t magically grow,
though, I’ve found, stomachs do.

There are only so many
things you can do in a day,
only so many things
you can do in a lifetime.
Making choices creates boundaries.
Boundaries help you make choices.
Choices create you.
You are where you need to be.

Emily Lewis Penn

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.

Denise Levertov

Monday, February 5, 2024

Your actions speak so loud that I can’t hear what you say.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To live a good life—we have the potential for it. If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference.

Marcus Aurelius

Sunday, February 4, 2024

Meditation practice is like piano scales, basketball drills, ballroom dance class. Practice requires discipline; it can be tedious; it is necessary. After you have practiced enough, you become more skilled at the art form itself. You do not practice to become a great scale player or drill champion. You practice to become a musician or athlete. Likewise, one does not practice meditation to become a great meditator. We meditate to wake up and live, to become skilled at the art of living.

Elizabeth Lesser

Life

Charlotte Bronte

Saturday, February 3, 2024

It should be firmly established in the mind of every individual that he is part of the whole life of the universe and that his relationship to universal life is that of one cell to the whole body. The boundaries of the individual life are not restricted to the boundaries of the body, nor even to those of one’s family or one’s home; they extend far beyond those spheres to the limitless horizon of unbounded cosmic life.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

When you arise in the morning,
think of what a precious privilege
it is to be alive, to breathe, to think,
to enjoy, to love.

Marcus Aurelius

Friday, February 2, 2024

Hesse on Wonder

Wonder is where it starts, and though wonder is also where it ends, this is no futile path. Whether admiring a patch of moss, a crystal, flower, or golden beetle, a sky full of clouds, a sea with the serene, vast sigh of its swells, or a butterfly wing with its arrangement of crystalline ribs, contours, and the vibrant bezel of its edges, the diverse scripts and ornamentations of its markings, and the infinite, sweet, delightfully inspired transitions and shadings of its colors — whenever I experience part of nature, whether with my eyes or another of the five senses, whenever I feel drawn in, enchanted, opening myself momentarily to its existence and epiphanies, that very moment allows me to forget the avaricious, blind world of human need, and rather than thinking or issuing orders, rather than acquiring or exploiting, fighting or organizing, all I do in that moment is “wonder,” like Goethe, and not only does this wonderment establish my brotherhood with him, other poets, and sages, it also makes me a brother to those wondrous things I behold and experience as the living world: butterflies and moths, beetles, clouds, rivers and mountains, because while wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity.

Hermann Hesse

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

The Rose Family

The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But now the theory goes
That the apple’s a rose,
And the pear is, and so’s
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose
But were always a rose.

Robert Frost

Thursday, February 1, 2024

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman

WORD OF THE DAY

Besa
(Albanian, n ) – A code of honor, which serves as the highest ethical code in the country. “Besa” means literally “to keep the promise.” One who acts according to “Besa” is someone who keeps their word, someone to whom one can trust one’s life and the lives of one’s family.

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, crying has always been a sign that you are alive.

Charlotte Bronte, English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature.

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

Confucius

It’s not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong;
not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich;
not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned;
and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher and statesman whose works are seen as contributing to the scientific method and remained influential through the later stages of the scientific revolution.

One kind word can warm three winter months.

Japanese Proverb

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.

Epictetus (55-135 AD), Greek Stoic philosopher

Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants.

Epictetus

At any moment, you have a choice that either leads you closer to your spirit or further away from it.

Thich Nhat Hanh

When another person makes you suffer, it is because they suffer deeply within themselves and their suffering is spilling over. They do not need punishment–they need your help.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Monday, January 29, 2024

A Poem for Someone Who Is Juggling Her Life

This is a poem for someone
who is juggling her life.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.

It needs repeating
over and over
to catch her attention
over and over,
as someone who is juggling her life
finds it difficult to hear.

Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
Let it all fall sometimes.

Rose Cook

The greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble…. They can never be solved, but only outgrown…. This ‘outgrowing’, as I formerly called it, on further experience was seen to consist in a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through this widening of view, the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency.

Carl Jung (1875-1961)

Sunday, January 28, 2024

The factor of time is very vital in life.
Those who have accomplished great things
in the world have been those who valued time in their life.
The time of life is limited and a great amount of evolution
has to be accomplished for fulfillment of life.
Therefore, the factor of time must be valued above everything.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Rumi

I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I’ll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else. Kindness – that simple word. To be kind – it covers everything, to my mind. If you’re kind that’s it.

Raold Dahl, British author of popular children’s literature and short stories, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, and James and the Giant Peach

Saturday, January 27, 2024

It is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.

Mary Oliver

Friday, January 26, 2024

Fire

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.
When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible
We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

Judy Brown

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

Pema Chodron

Thursday, January 25, 2024

To Come Home to Yourself

May all that is unforgiven in you,
Be released.
May your fears yield
Their deepest tranquilities.
May all that is unlived in you,
Blossom into a future,
Graced with love.

John O’Donohue

Who You Are

Who you are is so much more than what you do. The essence, shining through the heart, soul, and center, the bare and bold truth of you are does not lie in your to-do list. You are not just at the surface of your skin, not just the impulse to arrange the muscles of your face into a smile or a frown, not just boundless energy, or bone wearying fatigue. Delve deeper. You are divinity; the vast and open sky of spirit. It’s the light of God, the ember at your core, the passion and the presence, the timeless, deathless essence of you that reaches out and touches me. Who you are transcends fear and turns suffering into liberation. Who you are is love.

Danna Faulds

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Have You Earned Your Tomorrow

Is anybody happier because you passed his way?
Does anyone remember that you spoke to him today?
This day is almost over, and its toiling time is through;
Is there anyone to utter now a kindly word of you?

Did you give a cheerful greeting to the friend who came along?
Or a churlish sort of “Howdy” and then vanish in the throng?
Were you selfish pure and simple as you rushed along the way,
Or is someone mighty grateful for a deed you did today?

Can you say tonight, in parting with the day that’s slipping fast,
That you helped a single brother of the many that you passed?
Is a single heart rejoicing over what you did or said;
Does a man whose hopes were fading now with courage look ahead?

Did you waste the day, or lose it, was it well or sorely spent?
Did you leave a trail of kindness or a scar of discontent?
As you close your eyes in slumber do you think that God would say,
You have earned one more tomorrow by the work you did today?

Edgar A. Guest

When you listen to a lecture, you should not have any idea of yourself. You should not have your own idea when you listen to someone. Forget what you have in your mind and just listen to what he says. To have nothing in your mind is naturalness. Then you will understand what he says. But if you have some idea to compare with what he says, you will not hear everything; your understanding will be one-sided; that is not naturalness.

Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

When you do something, you should be completely involved in it. You should devote yourself to it completely.

Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Each Moment is Precious

Live in the moment,
Just take it all in.
Pay attention to everything,
Right there and right then.
Don’t let your mind wander
To what’s coming next.
Cherish this moment
And give it your best.
Don’t let tomorrow
Make you rush through today,
Or too many great moments
Will just go to waste.
And the person you’re with,
In that moment you share,
Give them all of your focus;
Be totally there.
Laugh till it hurts,
Let the tears drop.
Fill up each moment
With all that you’ve got.
Don’t miss the details;
The lesson is there.
Don’t get complacent;
Stay sharp and aware.
It can take but a moment
To change your life’s path.
And once it ticks by,
There is no going back.
In just 60 seconds,
You may make a new friend.
Find your true love,
Or see a life start or end.
You become who you are
In those moments you live.
And the growth’s not in taking
But in how much you give.
Life is just moments,
So precious and few.
Whether valued or squandered,
It’s all up to you!

Patricia A. Fleming

(Note: Fleming was the middle child of three and had a middle-class upbringing. She worked as a psychiatric social worker for 36 years and after retiring, she began writing inspirational poems about life. )

The secret to living well and longer is: eat half, walk double, laugh triple, and love without measure.

Tibetan proverb

Monday, January 22, 2024

Extravagaria

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness…

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves
with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead in winter
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Pablo Neruda

A Day of Doing Nothing

Don’t do anything on such a day.
Go outside to be on this carpet of white
Sit still on cotton
That tastes like summer ice cream
Don’t dream of beaches, the sun and warm air.
Stillness.
White on white, like nothingness.
Like, everything.

Thu Tran, MD

Sunday, January 21, 2024

What Do We Know

The sky cleared
I was standing
under a tree.

and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment

at which moment
my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain —
imagine! Imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.

Mary Oliver

THE PROPHET

Do not live half a life
and do not die a half death
If you choose silence, then be silent
When you speak, do so until you are finished
If you accept, then express it bluntly
Do not mask it
If you refuse then be clear about it
for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance
Do not accept half a solution
Do not believe half truths
Do not dream half a dream
Do not fantasize about half hopes
Half the way will get you no where
You are a whole that exists to live a life
not half a life.

Khalil Gibran

Saturday, January 20, 2024

See the job. Do the job. Stay out of the misery.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

You have control over action alone,
never over its fruits. Live not for
the fruits of action, nor attach
yourself to inaction.

Bhagavad-Gita, Ch 2, Verse 47

You ask a philosopher a question and after he or she has talked for a bit, you don’t understand your question anymore!

Philippa Foot (1920-2010), English philosopher

I have found that if I say what I am really thinking and feeling, people are more likely to say what they really think and feel. The conversation becomes a real conversation.

Carol Gilligan, American philosopher

You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

C. S. Lewis

Friday, January 19, 2024

If the doors of perception were cleansed
everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite.
For man has closed himself up,
till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.

William Blake

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

William Blake

For all eternity, I forgive you and you forgive me.

William Blake

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

William Blake

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

William Blake

Words are a pretext.
It is the inner bond that draws
one person to another, not words.

Rumi

Go back and take care of yourself.
Your body needs you, your feelings need you,
Your perceptions need you.
Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it.
Go home and be there for all these things.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Thursday, January 18, 2024

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves that we find in them.

Thomas Merton

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Mahatma Gandhi

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

Mahatma Gandhi

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Mahatma Gandhi

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Maria Popova, The Marginalian

The technique of receiving help from the surroundings is in our attitude of giving. If we want to receive the maximum at all times, we must have an attitude of giving.
“If you want to receive, you must give” is a law of nature.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other – above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men [and women], both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.

Albert Einstein

EARLY BIRD

Oh, if you’re a bird, be an early bird
And catch the worm for your breakfast plate.
If you’re a bird, be an early bird—
But if you’re a worm, sleep late.

Shel Silverstein

PUT SOMETHING IN

Draw a crazy picture,
Write a nutty poem,
Sing a mumble-gumble song,
Whistle through your comb.
Do a loony-goony dance
‘Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain’t been there before.

Shel Silverstein

Monday, January 15, 2024

I do not forget any good deed done to me and I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.

Viktor Frankl

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Viktor Frankl

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

Viktor Frankl

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality.

Viktor Frankl

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

Maya Angelou

Excerpts about the three types of Greek love from
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” Speech
July 4, 1965, Washington, DC

Now I always have to pause and try to give the meaning of love in the area of human relations. And fortunately, the Greek language comes to our aid at this point, there are three words in the Greek language for love. There’s the word eros. This is the sort of aesthetic love. Plato talks about it a great deal in his dialogues, a yearning of the soul for the realm of the divine. It has come to us to be a sort of a romantic love. Romantic love is a phase of eros.

And so we all know about eros. We’ve experienced it. We live with it. We read about it in all of the beauties of literature. … In a sense, Shakespeare was speaking of eros when he said love is not love which alters, when it’s alteration bends with the remover to remove it. You know, I can remember that because I used to quote it to my wife when we were courting. That’s eros.

The Greek language talks about phileo, which is a sort of a reciprocal love. It is a love, an intimate affection between personal friends and so on this level you love because you are loved. You love people that you like. This is friendship.

Then the Greek language comes out with another word. It is a word agape. Agape is more than romantic love. Agape is more than friendship. Agape is understanding creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart. …

I believe that this is a type of expression of love that can guide us through this period of transition. This is a part of the nonviolent resistance approach. It has practical consequences and is based on high and noble moral and ethical principles. So the individual who follows this method stands up before the opponent and says we will match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. …”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott, Saint Lucian poet and playwright, who received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature

WORD OF THE DAY

Ishq
(Arabic, n ) – This word evokes “Pure love” or “divine love”—and is derived from the root of “to stick or cleave to.” In Islam, the notion of love is often conceived in an ascending hierarchical order:

(1) natural love or human love between two people,

(2) intellectual love of scripture, and

(3) divine love.

Ishq is divine love and is used extensively in Sufi poetry and other Islamic literature to describe the selfless and burning love for the divine. It is the pure love that is key to the connection between human beings and God, and is sometimes held to have been the basis of creation.

Saturday, January 13, 2024

The Gentle Art of Finding Myself

I felt ungrounded, a little lost, a little sad,
in my second year of college long, long ago.

I visited a counselor, hoping for words
to ease the pain, to set me free.

What I got, instead, was “You’re fine,
a little sad, you’re ok.”

The remedy, to me, it seemed to be,
to leave – to find myself.

What does that even mean?
Where do you go to find yourself –
    Another city?
    Another country?
    A new job?
    New friends?

Wherever I went, there I was.

In my 60th year, I was still
    looking, longing, learning
    that the journey is within,
    that I can’t run away.
Thoughts are like weather,
    they come, they go.

Wherever I go, there I am.
Yes, something deep inside
is easy to miss.
Yet, it was there all along,
Call it stillness, call it bliss.

Emily Lewis Penn

Who Does He Think She Is?

I asked the Zebra:

Are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?

And the zebra asked me:

Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or are you quiet with noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?

And on and on and on and on
And on and on he went.

I’ll never ask a zebra

About stripes

Again

Shel Silverstein

Friday, January 12, 2024

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

Elizabeth Stone

Fear

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 cannot 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

Even if you’re on the right track,
you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

Will Rogers

Talent is nurtured in solitude;
character is formed in the
stormy billows of the world.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thursday, January 11, 2024

If you are more
fortunate than others,
build a longer table
not a taller fence.

Anonymous

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

The fact that the bridge is shaky does not mean it will break.

Igbo Proverb from Nigeria

If you are on a road to nowhere – find another road.

Ashanti Proverb from Ghana

The one who asks questions does not lose his way.

Akan Proverb from Ghana

On Waking

I give thanks for arriving
Safely in a new dawn,
For the gift of eyes
To see the world,
The gift of mind
To feel at home
In my life.
The waves of possibility
Breaking on the shore of dawn,
The harvest of the past
That awaits my hunger,
And all the furtherings
This new day will bring.

John O’Donohue

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

According to quantum physics a particle vibrating due to your voice when you speak can affect a molecule inside a star at the edge of the Universe, instantly. This phenomenon is known as quantum entanglement. The greatest illusion of this Universe is the illusion of separation.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Anger – it’s a paralyzing emotion. You can’t get anything done. People sort of think it’s an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling. I don’t think it’s any of that. It’s helpless, it’s absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers. Anger doesn’t provide any of that. I have no use for it whatsoever.

Toni Morrison (1931-2013), one of the most celebrated authors in the world. Her novels have earned her the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Monday, January 8, 2024

Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.

Jamie Anderson

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

Martin Buber (1878-1965), Austrian and Israeli philosopher

Sunday, January 7, 2024

Always in the deep woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place . . . There will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is an ancient fear of the unknown. And it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into. What you are doing is exploring.

Wendell Berry

When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story. It may be just the beginning of a great adventure.

Pema Chödrön

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

Pema Chödrön

Honesty without kindness, humor, and good-heartedness can be just mean.

Pema Chödrön

Saturday, January 6, 2024

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

Stephen Hawking

Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets

Sir Isaac Newton

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

Lao Tzu

Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world.
All things break. And all things can be mended.
Not with time, as they say, but with intention.
So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally.
The broken world awaits in darkness for the light that is you.

L. R. Knost

If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.

Pema Chödrön

Friday, January 5, 2024

Don’t let people pull you into their storm. Pull them into your peace.

Pema Chödrön

UNDERFACE

Underneath my outside face
There’s a face that none can see.
A little less smiley,
A little less sure,
But a whole lot more like me.

Shel Silverstein

HOW MANY, HOW MUCH
How many slams in an old screen door?
Depends how loud you shut it.
How many slices in a bread?
Depends how thin you cut it.
How much good inside a day?
Depends how good you live ‘em.
How much love inside a friend?
Depends how much you give ‘em.

Shel Silverstein

Thursday, January 4, 2024

Loneliness is being alone — and not liking it. It’s a feeling. Solitude is being alone — and content. It’s a choice.

Anonymous

If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.

Jean-Paul Sartre

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Albert Einstein

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.

May Sarton

Lord Byron

At the heart of every winter,

there is a quivering spring;

and behind the veil of each night

there is a smiling dawn.

Kahlil Gibran

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but empties today of its strength.

Corrie Ten Boom

We spend precious hours fearing the inevitable. It would be wise to use that time adoring our families, cherishing our friends and living our lives.

Maya Angelou

Wednesday, January 3, 2024

This is the glory of the nature of the Self.

Having come back home, the traveler finds peace.

The intensity of happiness is beyond the superlative.

The bliss of this state eliminates the possibility of any sorrow, great or small…

This state of self-sufficiency leaves one steadfast in oneself—

fulfilled in eternal contentment.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

It takes courage to say yes to rest and play in a culture where exhaustion is seen as a status symbol.

Brené Brown

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Repentance, Repair, and What True Forgiveness Takes: Lessons from Maimonides for the Modern World
Maria Popova on Danya Ruttenberg’s work on repentance
(Read Here)

… you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Mary Oliver, excerpted from In Blackwater Woods

Don’t Quit

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low but the debts are high,
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit…
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit!
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many failures turn about
When we might have won had we stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow…
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor’s cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out…
And you can never tell how close you are
It may be near when it seems so far.
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Edgar A. Guest

Monday, Janaury 1, 2024

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even thirty-six but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

Lucille Clifton (1936-2010), one of the most renowned and beloved Black American poets who was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

…

Thursday, September 7, 2023

Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and awful it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That’s just living heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.

L.R. Knost

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

What are heavy? sea-sand and sorrow.
What are brief? today and tomorrow.
What are frail? spring blossoms and youth.
What are deep? the ocean and truth.

Christina Rossetti

To Come Home To Yourself

May all that is unforgiven in you,
Be released.
May your fears yield
Their deepest tranquilities.
May all that is unlived in you,
Blossom into a future,
Graced with love.

John O’Donohue

Tuesday, September 5, 2023

The Shape of Love

What we see is not the most important.
Could dust rise
without the invisible
hand of the wind?
Could a fan turn without any current?
Could lungs breathe without breath?
Tell me
What is the shape of Love?
How much does Joy weigh
when held in the palm of your hand?
Can you catch the Spirit of Life in a jar?
All things seen depend
upon the Unseen.
All sounds depend upon Silence.
All things felt depend
upon that which is beyond feeling.

Adyashanti

The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.

Thich Nat Hahn

Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Monday, September 4, 2023

A lovely poem on the power of a kind thought from the author of Anne of Green Gables:

Gratitude

I thank thee, friend, for the beautiful thought
That in words well chosen thou gavest to me,
Deep in the life of my soul it has wrought
With its own rare essence to ever imbue me,
To gleam like a star over devious ways,
To bloom like a flower on the drearest days
Better such gift from thee to me
Than gold of the hills or pearls of the sea.

For the luster of jewels and gold may depart,
And they have in them no life of the giver,
But this gracious gift from thy heart to my heart
Shall witness to me of thy love forever;
Yea, it shall always abide with me
As a part of my immortality;
For a beautiful thought is a thing divine,
So I thank thee, oh, friend, for this gift of thine.

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942), Canadian author best known for her collection of novels, essays, short stories, and poetry, beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables. She published 20 novels as well as 530 short stories, 500 poems, and 30 essays.

Think Like a Tree

Soak up the sun
Affirm life’s magic
Be graceful in the wind
Stand tall after a storm
Feel refreshed after it rains
Grow strong without notice
Be prepared for each season
Provide shelter to strangers
Hang tough through a cold spell
Emerge renewed at the first signs of spring
Stay deeply rooted while reaching for the sky
Be still long enough to
hear your own leaves rustling.

Karen I. Shragg

Sunday, September 3, 2023

Softer than the flower where kindness is concerned.
Stronger than thunder where principles are at stake.

Upanishads

Today

Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.

Mary Oliver

Saturday, September 2, 2023

Let There Be

From breath to breath
from dusk to dusk

let there be rainfall
when the soil is parched as rock

let there be sunshine
when the barley bends to be cut

let there be rainbows
when the days are short of light

let there be wind
when our boats are turned for home.

Jane Clarke

All meditation where the intellect is forced to work, fatigues the body. There are other meditations which are restful, full of peace for the intellect, without labor for the interior faculties of the soul, and which are performed without either physical or interior effort. I had experienced such extreme satisfaction since beginning to make use of this method of meditation that I did not think it possible to experience gentler or more innocent joys in life.

Renee Descartes (1596-1650), French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. He connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry.

Friday, September 1, 2023

When eating fruit, remember the one who planted the tree.

Vietnamese Proverb

Enough is a feast.

Buddhist Proverb

At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

Albert Schweitzer

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

Martin Buber

Grief, I have learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.

Jamie Anderson, poet and writer living in the high mountains of Central New Mexico.

Thursday, August 31, 2023

I can feel everything and survive. What I thought would kill me, didn’t. Every time I said to myself: I can’t take this anymore — I was wrong. The truth was that I could and did take it all — and I kept surviving. Surviving again and again made me less afraid of myself, of other people, of life. I learned that I’d never be free from pain but I could be free from the fear of pain, and that was enough.

Glennon Doyle, Untamed

WORDS OF THE DAY

Dadirri
(Australian aboriginal, n ) – Deep listening, an almost spiritual skill, based on respect and a quiet still awareness and patience.

Ayurnamat
(Inuktitut ) – Not worrying about things that cannot be changed.

Gigil
(Tagalog, n ) – The irresistible urge to pinch or squeeze someone because they are loved or cherished.

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Once upon a time, when women were birds,
there was the simple understanding that
to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk
was to heal the world through joy.
The birds still remember
what we have forgotten,
that the world is meant to be
celebrated.

Terry Tempest Williams, American writer, educator, and conservationist. Her writing is rooted in the American West and has been significantly influenced by the arid landscape of Utah. She was born in 1955.

Seek truth in meditation,
not in moldy books.
Look in the sky to find the moon,
not in the pond.

Persian Proverb

Tuesday, August 29, 2023

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE CHAPTERS

1. I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out

2. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I’m in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

3. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in… It’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

4. I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

5. I walk down another street.

Portia Nelson, Sogyal Rinpoche (The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying)

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When the heart is hard and the mind is narrow, then one has to try hard to feel something; one has to try hard to do something. And when the heart is softer then your mind is enlarged—expanded mind. Then one doesn’t have to work so hard to accomplish things and to experience things, to feel. Capacity of feeling and capacity of understanding both improve with the expansion of consciousness.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed. … We made the world living in and we have to make it over.

James Baldwin

To practice five things under all circumstances constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.

Confucius

The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), German-born American historian and political philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.

Monday, August 28, 2023

In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.  … Not many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury; nowadays it’s often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize.

Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

When I am Among the Trees

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Mary Oliver

You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.

Jan Glidewell

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: ‘It goes on.’

Robert Frost

Sunday, August 27, 2023

This we know,
the earth does not belong to man;
man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected,
like the blood which unites one family.
What befalls the earth
befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life.
He is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web
he does to himself.

Attributed to Chief Si’ahl/Seattle (1786-1866), who led the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes when the first Euro-American settlers arrived in the Puget Sound region in the 1850s

He that is hard to please, may get nothing in the end.

Aesop

People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.

Winnie the Pooh (AA Milne)

“Sometimes,’ said Pooh, ‘the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”

Winnie the Pooh (AA Milne)

Saturday, August 26, 2023

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years…

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper….

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me…

I am food on the prisoner’s plate…

I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills…

I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden…

I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge…

I am the heart contracted by joy…
the longest hair, white
before the rest…

I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow…

I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit…

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name…

Jane Kenyon

I thank You God for most this amazing  day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.  

e.e. cummings

Friday, August 25, 2023

I would like an abundance of peace. I would like full vessels of charity. I would like rich treasures of mercy. I would like cheerfulness to preside over all.

St. Brigid of Kildare (451 – 525), the “mother saint” of Ireland, and one of its three national saints along with St. Patrick and St. Columba.

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thursday, August 24, 2023

The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountains and me,
until only the mountains remain.

Li Po, Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain

(Note: Called the Poet Immortal, Li Po (701- 762) is often regarded as one of the two greatest poets in China’s literary history. )

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

Leo Tolstoy

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

Pema Chodron

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

This is a poem for someone
who is juggling her life.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
It needs repeating
over and over
to catch her attention
over and over,
as someone who is juggling her life
finds it difficult to hear.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
Let it all fall sometimes.

Rose Cook

Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:

Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

There Is Pleasure in the Pathless Woods

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Lord Byron

(Note: George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was an English romantic poet, one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the greatest of English poets. )

Tuesday, August 22, 2023

A Great Wagon

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

Rumi

Listen … and incline the ear of your heart.

St. Benedict

There’s a door in every home, wherever we are. We can go in and out of it without fear or taking extra precautions; we can travel, visit our loved ones, and meet innumerable new people. Opening it requires only the willpower to take a moment of complete silence and ask ourselves what is really important, and what isn’t. The key to this other door can be found at the crossroads of the head and the heart: if you want to find it, you will. There is a home within each of us that is like no other, beautiful and welcoming, full of sunlight, with a blooming garden, a doorway to the world and a balcony that looks over an infinite universe. A home made up of wonder, the desire the share, love, and the certainty that this whole earthly realm is one big family. Let’s seek it out to discover the immeasurable beauty of what we hold inside and everything that we are.

Andreas Bocelli

Living in the Now

What’s gone has made you what you are
So don’t fear what’s ahead
Put trust in what will be, will be
And choose to live instead
Don’t live in the now worrying
What may or may not be
Take this moment in your time
And live it totally
There’s no time like the present
Breathe deep and feel alive
Living in the here and now
Will help you rise and thrive
Now is all there ever is
It’s the only time that’s real
Let the future take its course
And leave the past to heal

Vanessa Hughes

Monday, August 21, 2023

Best Season of Your Life

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

Wu Men (1183-1260), Chinese meditation master

And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful that the risk It took to blossom.

Anais Nin

Whenever you do something that is not aligned with the yearning of your soul—you create suffering.

Anais Nin

We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.

Anais Nin

Sunday, August 20, 2023

You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

C. S. Lewis

I have a theory that the moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

I have tried this experiment a thousand times and I have never been disappointed. The more I look at a thing, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I want to see. It is like peeling an onion. There is always another layer, and another, and another. And each layer is more beautiful than the last.

This is the way I look at the world. I don’t see it as a collection of objects, but as a vast and mysterious organism. I see the beauty in the smallest things, and I find wonder in the most ordinary events. I am always looking for the hidden meaning, the secret message. I am always trying to understand the mystery of life.

Henry Miller (1891-1980), award-winning American novelist

Hokusai Says

Hokusai says look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing.

He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat
yourself as long as it is interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.

He says keep praying.

He says everyone of us is a child,
everyone of us is ancient,
everyone of us has a body.
He says everyone of us is frightened.
He says everyone of us has to find
a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive–
shells, buildings, people, fish,
mountains, trees, wood is alive.
Water is alive.

Everything has its own life.

Everything lives inside us.

He says live with the world inside you.

It matters that you feel.

It matters that you notice.

It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.

He says don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid.

Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.

Roger Start Keyes, art historian, Hokusai scholar, and co-founder of York Zen, wrote his poem “Hokusai Says” in 1990. It came to him as was making notes for the “Young Hokusai” paper he was to give at a symposium on Hokusai the following day.

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don’t be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning “Good morning” at total strangers.

Maya Angelou

Saturday, August 19, 2023

Within us is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, the eternal One.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Your actions speak so loud that I can’t hear what you say.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Come from Gratitude

To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe–to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it–is a wonder beyond words. Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art. Furthermore, it is a privilege to be alive in this time when we can choose to take part in the self-healing of our world.

Joanna Macy

Friday, August 18, 2023

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest-a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein

August

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend
…
all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking
…
of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body
…
accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among
…
the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

Mary Oliver

Thursday, August 17, 2023

Happiness

If luck you chase, you have not grown
enough for happiness to stay,
not even if you get your way.

If, what you lost, you still bemoan,
and grasp at tasks, and dash and dart,
you have not known true peace of heart.

But if no wishes are your own,
and you don’t try to win the game,
and Lady Luck is just a name,

then tides of life won’t reach your breast
and all your strife
and all your soul will rest.

Hermann Hesse

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

Epicurus

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

Maya Angelou

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Self-Observation Without Judgment

Release the harsh and pointed inner
voice. it’s just a throwback to the past,
and holds no truth about this moment.

Let go of self-judgment, the old,
learned ways of beating yourself up
for each imagined inadequacy.

Allow the dialogue within the mind
to grow friendlier, and quiet. Shift
out of inner criticism and life
suddenly looks very different.

i can say this only because I make
the choice a hundred times a day to release the voice that refuses to
acknowledge the real me.

What’s needed here isn’t more prodding toward perfection, but
intimacy – seeing clearly, and
embracing what I see.

Love, not judgment, sows the
seeds of tranquility and change.

Danna Faulds

It’s all I have to bring today (26)

It’s all I have to bring today—

This, and my heart beside—

This, and my heart, and all the fields—

And all the meadows wide—

Be sure you count—should I forget

Some one the sum could tell—

This, and my heart, and all the Bees

Which in the Clover dwell.

Emily Dickinson

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

Don’t talk unless you can improve upon the silence.

Jorge Luis Borges

Sometimes it is a good choice not to choose at all.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance

Monday, August 14, 2023

It’s good to leave each day behind, like flowing water, free of sadness. Yesterday is gone and it’s tale told; today new seeds are growing.

Rumi

Forest Lake

I was alone on a sunny shore
by the forest’s pale blue lake,
in the sky floated a single cloud
and on the water a single isle.
The ripe sweetness of summer dripped
in beads from every tree
and straight into my opened heart
a tiny drop ran down.

Edith Södergran, translated from Swedish by Stina Katchadourian

Sunday, August 13, 2023

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

WORDS OF THE DAY

Querencia
(Spanish, n ) – The place where one’s strength is drawn from; where one feels at home; the place where you are your most authentic self. It can be physical place: at the foot of a favorite tree, a cozy window seat, book store, or a forest path. But the ideal is to find “querencia” within your own soul so that no matter where you are, “querencia” will be a part of it in one way or another.

Cwtch
(Welsh, n, “kutch” ) – A cuddle or hug. However, it’s so much more than that. “Cwtch” is something you do when you’re overflowing with love for a grandparent, grandchild, son or daughter, mother or father, partner, best friend, a beloved dog or cat—you have so much love that you can’t help but try and squeeze that love into them. Hugs are for everyone; “cwtches” are only for a few.

Saturday, August 12, 2023

People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live. What I mean is we never cease to stand like curious children before the great Mystery into which we were born.

Albert Einstein, in a letter to Otto Julius Birger, September 29, 1942.

The greatest wisdom is to know thyself.

Talmud

The Talmud is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law and Jewish theology.

Go outside, but return within thyself;
In the inward man dwells the truth.

St. Augustine

Friday, August 11, 2023

The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry

Compassionate listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart. Even if he says things that are full of wrong perceptions, full of bitterness, you are still capable of continuing to listen with compassion. Because you know that listening like that, you give that person a chance to suffer less.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Thursday, August 10, 2023

We wait for stuff to get easier. It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better.

Kara Lawson, Duke University’s women’s basketball head coach

My future starts when I wake up every morning.

Miles Davis

If I accept the sunshine and warmth, then I must also accept the thunder and lightning.

Khalil Gibran

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Howard Zinn

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Simone Weil

Whatever we put our attention on will grow stronger in our life.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

People seek retreats for themselves — in the country, by the sea, in the hills — and you yourself are particularly prone to this yearning. But all this is quite on the surface, when what is open to you, at any time you want, is to retreat into yourself. For nowhere is there more quiet or more freedom from trouble than when you retire into your own soul ….

Marcus Aurelius

It’s not what we eat but what we digest that
makes us strong; not what we gain but what
we save that makes us rich; not what we read
but what we remember that makes us learned;
and not what we profess but what we practice
that gives us integrity.

Monday, August 7, 2023

When you love someone, you have to offer that person the best you have. The best thing we can offer another person is our true presence.

Thich Nhat Hahn

The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet.

Thich Nhat Hahn

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Marcus Aurelius

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sunday, August 6, 2023

May everyone be happy.
May everyone be free of disease.
May auspiciousness be seen everywhere.
May suffering belong to no one.
Peace.

Upanishads

Love is not blind – it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.

Rabbi Julius Gordon

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.

Frederick Douglass

Saturday, August 5, 2023

Important

We hurry through the so-called boring things
in order to attend to that which we deem
more important, interesting.
Perhaps the final freedom will be a recognition that
everything in every moment is “essential”
and that nothing at all is “important.

Helen M. Luke

Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

Joy Harjo, member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and the former US poet laureate

In Beauty I Walk

With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again

Navajo prayer

Cherokee Prayer Blessing

May the Warm Winds of Heaven
Blow softly upon your house.
May the Great Spirit
Bless all who enter there.
May your Moccasins
Make happy tracks
in many snows,
and may the Rainbow
Always touch your shoulder.

Friday, August 4, 2023

The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth,
it can lie down like silk breathing
or toss havoc shoreward; it can give

gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth
like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can
sweet-talk entirely. As I can too,
and so, no doubt, can you, and you.

Mary Oliver

You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.

Winnie the Pooh (AA Milne)

Love is taking a few steps backward maybe even more to give way to the happiness of the person you love.

Winnie the Pooh (AA Milne)

Thursday, August 3, 2023

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.

Howard Thurmon, mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.

William Butler Yeats

Those who have a “why” to live, can bear with almost any “how.”

Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
    Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
    Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
    Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
    Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
    Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
    Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
    Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
    Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
    Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
    Give the world the best you have anyway.

Kent M. Keith

Compassion

Miller Williams

Wednesday, August 2, 2023

There is only one way to avoid criticism.
Say nothing.
Do nothing.
Be nothing.

Aristotle

Fall down seven times, stand up eight.

Japanese Proverb

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

Confucius

Tuesday, August 1, 2023

If you don’t know where you are going, then any road will do.

Tibetan Proverb

Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.

Native American Proverb

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Turkish Proverb

Out of clutter find simplicity, from discord find harmony, in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

Albert Einstein

Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.

Seneca

Monday, July 31, 2023

PAROS

Wandering alleys
White washed buildings, blue windows of Mediterranean sea.
Salty breezes, cloudless sky
A scent of Bougainvilleas. Do Bougainvilleas have scent?
Or, could it be Lavender, Rosemary, Pomegranate blossoming,
Into this scent of beauty by the sea?
White cats. black cats, cats with grey, cats with orange-brown spots,
resting on flower pots, on steps,
by the tables in outdoor restaurants,
Waiting for leftover deep fried anchovies or Sardines.
Would cats eat leftover spinach pies, bread,
tomato-cucumber salads?
Do they understand English commands?
Would cats drink leftover beers, like seagulls and pigeons,
drinking from infinity pools, on rooftop hotels?
Like life never needs to end by this Mediterranean sea of Paros.

Thu Tran

(Note: Paros is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea beloved for its beaches and traditional villages. )

3 haikus on multitasking

a hamster running
on many wheels at one time
remains at the start

Alexa Mahnken

a cat has nine lives
so do I
in my new role

Celestine Nudanu

mind and body
engaged in a single task
fairy-tale wedding

Karen Wibell

Sunday, July 30, 2023

Walk slowly

It only takes a reminder to breathe,
a moment to be still, and just like that,
something in me settles, softens, makes
space for imperfection. The harsh voice
of judgment drops to a whisper and I
remember again that life isn’t a relay
race; that we will all cross the finish
line; that waking up to life is what we
were born for. As many times as I
forget, catch myself charging forward
without even knowing where I’m going,
that many times I can make the choice
to stop, to breathe, and be, and walk
slowly into the mystery.

Danna Faulds

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.

Albert Einstein

(Note: Through his theories of relativity, Einstein showed that there is a fastest possible speed and that light moves at it. He showed us that gravity is a curvature of spacetime. And he laid the foundations of modern quantum mechanics when he proposed that light really comes in little bundles of energy he called quanta. )

Saturday, July 29, 2023

Outside is the joy of the drop. Inside is the joy of the ocean.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

this is the recipe of life
said my mother

as she held me in her arms as i wept

think of those flowers you plant
in the garden each year
they will teach you
that people too
must wilt
fall
root
rise
in order to bloom

Rupi Kaur

Friday, July 28, 2023

I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can’t make it through one door, I’ll go through another door – or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

Rabindranath Tagore

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and right-doing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, better known as Rumi, was a 13th century Sufi poet, mystic, scholar/theologian

If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?

Rumi

The lamps are different, but the light is the same.

Rumi

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Rumi

Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates:
“Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?”

Rumi

Thursday, July 27, 2023

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

Even
After
All this time

The Sun never says to the Earth,

‘You owe me.’

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.

Hafiz

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

THE FOURTH SIGN OF THE ZODIAC (PART 3)

I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.

Mary Oliver

THE FOURTH SIGN OF THE ZODIAC (PART 4)

Late yesterday afternoon, in the heat,
all the fragile blue flowers in bloom
in the shrubs in the yard next door had
tumbled from the shrubs and lay
wrinkled and fading in the grass. But
this morning the shrubs were full of
the blue flowers again. There wasn’t
a single one on the grass. How, I
wondered, did they roll back up to
the branches, that fiercely wanting,
as we all do, just a little more of
life?

Mary Oliver

Go back and take care of yourself.
Your body needs you, your feelings need you,
Your perceptions need you.
Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it.
Go home and be there for all these things.

Thich Nhat Hanh

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way… As a man is, so he sees.

William Blake

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

If we are true to ourselves we cannot be false to anyone

William Shakespeare

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

(Note: It is important to note that following one’s bliss, as Campbell saw it, isn’t merely a matter of doing whatever you like, and certainly not doing simply as you are told. It is a matter of identifying that pursuit which you are truly passionate about and attempting to give yourself absolutely to it. In so doing, you will find your fullest potential and serve your community to the greatest possible extent. – Commentary from the Joseph Campbell Foundation)

Mindful

Everyday
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
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant —
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these —
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Mary Oliver

Monday, July 24, 2023

We spend precious hours fearing the inevitable. It would be wise to use that time adoring our families, cherishing our friends and living our lives.

Maya Angelou

HOW MANY, HOW MUCH

How many slams in an old screen door?
Depends how loud you shut it.
How many slices in a bread?
Depends how thin you cut it.
How much good inside a day?
Depends how good you live ‘em.
How much love inside a friend?
Depends how much you give ‘em.

Shel Silverstein

Sunday, July 23, 2023

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

William Butler Yeats

There Is A Pleasure In The Pathless Woods

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Lord Byron

Saturday, July 22, 2023

Language has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.

Paul Tillich (1886 –1965), German-American Christian existentialist philosopher and Lutheran minister who was one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century

Grandfather says, “When you feel powerless that’s because you’ve stopped listening to your own heart; that’s where power comes from.”

Gianni Crow, Native American healer

Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.

Rumi

Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.

Rumi

Friday, July 21, 2023

Money alone is only a mean; it presupposes a man to use it. The rich man can go where he pleases, but perhaps please himself nowhere. He can buy a library or visit the whole world, but perhaps has neither patience to read nor intelligence to see…. The purse may be full and the heart empty. He may have gained the world and lost himself; and with all his wealth around him … he may live as blank a life as any tattered ditcher.

Robert Louis Stevenson

The path of awakening is not about becoming who you are. Rather it is about unbecoming who you are not.

Albert Schweitzer

We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Thursday, July 20, 2023

RELEASE

This morning
as my eyes blink
open
it occurs to me
as if for the first time
what you, miracle body, have been up to
All night long, while I let go
you pumped blood through veins
to fingertips and toes
grew cells and eyelashes and nails
inhaled and exhaled
countless times
all this while the sun
tirelessly
birthed new
life
all this without a thought or a word
or a worry
without a drop of help
from me
I laugh when I remember
that just yesterday in a torrent
of heart-numbing
stories
I seriously thought
I needed to do something

Julia Fehrenbacher

Act now, amend later. Nothing will happen unless we make it happen. We don’t wait, we go ahead.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Happiness radiates like the fragrance from a flower and draws all good things towards you.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Maria Popova

I have a theory that the moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. I have tried this experiment a thousand times and I have never been disappointed. The more I look at a thing, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I want to see. It is like peeling an onion. There is always another layer, and another, and another. And each layer is more beautiful than the last.

Henry Miller

Denise Levertov

I know that I will never understand everything, but that doesn’t stop me from trying.

I am content to live in the mystery, to be surrounded by the unknown. I am content to be a seeker, a pilgrim, a traveler on the road to nowhere.

Henry Miller

WORDS OF THE DAY

Charmolypi
(Greek, n ) – “Sweet, joy-making sorrow.” The best word to describe how you feel while celebrating the life of a loved one who recently passed away or waving goodbye to your toddler on their first day of school is probably bittersweet. But that doesn’t convey the depth of that peculiar happy-sad emotion quite like charmolypi does.

Fjaka
(Croatian, n ) – “The sweetness of doing nothing.” In an age that champions the ability to multitask above all else, not trying to check the next item off your to-do list can seem indulgent. But if you do surrender your whole mind and body to not doing anything at all, it can feel almost euphoric. Croatians call this all-encompassing relaxation fjaka. Croations consider fjaka “a gift from God.”

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Come from Gratitude

Joanna Rogers Macy, environmental activist, author, general systems theory, and deep ecologist

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

George Bernard Shaw

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

Walt Whitman

Monday, July 17, 2023

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF…?

What would happen

if you removed the word ‘anxious’

and just paid attention

to these flickering sensations in the belly?

What would happen

if you took away the concept ‘lonely’

and simply became fascinated

with this heavy feeling in the heart area?

What would happen

if you deleted the image ‘sick’

or ‘broken’ or ‘bad’

and just got curious about

the tightness in the throat

the pressure in the head

the ache in the shoulders?

What would happen

if you stopped looking for solutions

and checked to see

if there was actually a problem here?

Come out of the exhausting storyline, friend.

It’s not true. It was never true.

Commit sacred awareness to a single living moment.

Come closer to yourself, Now.

Bring warmth to the tender places inside.

Infuse sensation with the light of attention.

It’s never as bad

as you think.

Jeff Foster

To Come Home to Yourself

May all that is unforgiven in you,

Be released.

May your fears yield

Their deepest tranquilities.

May all that is unlived in you,

Blossom into a future,

Graced with love.

John O’Donohue, former Catholic priest turned visionary bestselling author

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent
people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest
Critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sunday, July 16, 2023

One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean. Approaching the boy, he asked, “What are you doing?” The youth replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.” “Son,” the man said, “don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can’t make a difference!”

After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, he said…” I made a difference for that one.”

Loren Eisley (1907-1977), American anthropologist, educator, philosopher, and natural science writer, who taught and published books from the 1950s through the 1970s. He received many honorary degrees and was a fellow of multiple professional societies.

Let us be together.
Let us eat together.
Let us be vital together.
Radiating Truth; radiating the light of life
Never shall we denounce anyone; never entertain negativity.

Taittiriya Upanishad

Saturday, July 15, 2023

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.

John Lubbock

Talent is nurtured in solitude; character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

HOW TO BE A POET
(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill — more of each
than you have — inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

Wendall Barry

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

Invitation

Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude –
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

Mary Oliver

Friday, July 14, 2023

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott

WORDS OF THE DAY

Cynosure
(French, n) – In the 17th century, the word cynosure was used interchangeably for the North Star, or the northern constellation Ursa Minor. And while this is still the case, Merriam-Webster notes that anyone who is the “center of attention” or “serves to guide” can also be described as a cynosure.

Komorebi
(Japanese, adj) – This word describes the beauty and wonder of rays of light dappling through overhead leaves, casting shadows on the forest floor.

Thursday, July 13, 2023

You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity—your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose.

[…] if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it—A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Austrian poet

The Arrow and The Song

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), American poet and educator whose works include Paul Revere’s Ride, The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was the first American to translate Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and was one of the Fireside Poets from New England.

Aware

When I found the door
I found the vine leaves
speaking among themselves in abundant
whispers.
My presence made them
hush their green breath,
embarrassed, the way
humans stand up, buttoning their jackets,
acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if
the conversation had ended
just before you arrived.
I liked
the glimpse I had, though,
of their obscure
gestures. I liked the sound
of such private voices. Next time
I’ll move like cautious sunlight, open
the door by fractions, eavesdrop
peacefully.

Denise Levertov

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Who Turns

Who turns this into that? Sound into noise?
Aroma into odor? Taste into pleasure or disgust?
Who turns yes into no? Grace into unkindness?
Who turns the present into the past? Who turns the now into the not-now?
As-it-is into as-it-should-be?
Silence into boredom? Stillness into restlessness?
The ordinary into the menial?
Who turns pain into suffering? Change into loss?
Grief into woe? Woe into the story of your life?
Who turns stuff into sentiment? Desire into craving?
Acceptance into aversion?
Peace into war? Us into them?
Who turns life into labor? Time into toil?
Enough into not-enough?
Who turns why into why not?
Who turns delusion into enlightenment?
Who thinks? Who feels? Who senses?
Who turns?
All practice is the practice of making a turn in a different
Direction.

Karen Maezen Miller

Nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed. … We made the world we are living in and we have to make it over.

James Baldwin (1924-1987), American playwright, novelist. essayist

The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), German-born American historian and political philosopher

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveler hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1879)

Seek truth in meditation,
not in moldy books.
Look in the sky to find the moon,
not in the pond.

Persian Proverb

Having a place to go is a home.

Having someone to love is a family.

Having both is a blessing.

Donna Hedges

Monday, July 10, 2023

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

Invest in yourself. Meditate. Read. Eat healthy food. Drink water. Move your body. Spend time in nature. Rest up. You are worthy.

Anonymous

All living things must yield;
the cycle is revealed.
A leaf, once green, turns brown
then, falling to the ground,
dissolves to fertilize
a seedling on the rise.
As rain becomes the dew,
so every end is new.

Susan Noyes Anderson

Sunday, July 9, 2023

How yearns the solitary soul
To melt into the boundless whole,
And find itself again in peace!
The blind desire, the impatient will,
The restless thoughts and plans are still;
We yield ourselves—and wake in bliss!

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832), German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic.

A kind of waking trance—this for lack of a better word—I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. . . All at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this is not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest. . . utterly beyond words—where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. . . I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state is utterly beyond words? . . . There is no delusion in the matter! It is no nebulous ecstasy, but a state of transcendent wonder, associated with absolute clearness of mind.

William James (1842-1910), considered the “Father of American psychology.”

…that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Saturday, July 8, 2023

Carl Jung (1875 – 1961)

If there is righteousness in the heart,
there will be beauty in the character.
If there is beauty in the character,
there will be harmony in the home.
When there is harmony in the home,
there will be order in the nation.
When there is order in the nation,
there will be peace in the world.

Confucius

Friday, July 7, 2023

Stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive.

Hafez

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

William Faulkner

Thursday, July 6, 2023

There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a larger vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendships between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality almost impossible to describe.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)

Two Kinds of Intelligence

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

Rumi

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Steve Jobs

Wednesday, July 5, 2023

Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.

John O’Donohue

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

Emily Dickinson

Tuesday, July 4, 2023

Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, “It can’t be done.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

Arthur Ashe

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snow-Capped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

Martin Luther King Jr.

America the Beautiful (1893)
(4th verse )

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years,
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Katherine Lee Bates

WORD OF THE DAY

Pa’a ka waha
(Hawaiian ) – Observe, be silent and learn. If words are exiting your mouth, wisdom cannot come in.

Happiness, not in another place, but this place…not for another hour, but this hour

Walt Whitman

Monday, July 3, 2023

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

William Butler Yeats

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.

C. S. Lewis

Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.

Japanese Proverb

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy. They are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

Marcel Proust

We want to grow in good and, therefore, we only bring to mind that which is good. On whatever aspect we dwell, that comes into our heart. Whatever we dwell on our heart radiates. When is there time to dwell on what is not wanted? We spend time dwelling on the promising features. On whatever aspect we dwell, it comes into our heart.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

If you repeat the experience of transcending and you repeat it, and repeat, then it becomes just simply part of who you are. And that is how you experience the Self, experience Pure Consciousness—not only during meditation, but it becomes a reality even after meditation. This happens because more and more of the Self is now within your self— meaning, that the unified field of consciousness becomes available to us during our daily activity also.

Tony Nader, MD PhD

The Moon

The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;
She shines on thieves on the garden wall,
On streets and fields and harbour quays,
And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.

The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,
The howling dog by the door of the house,
The bat that lies in bed at noon,
All love to be out by the light of the moon.

But all of the things that belong to the day
Cuddle to sleep to be out of her way;
And flowers and children close their eyes
Till up in the morning the sun shall arise.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Experience is not what happens to you; it what you do with what happens to you.

Aldous Huxley

Sunday, July 2, 2023

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

They change their sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea.

Horace, Roman poet (65 BC to 8 BC)

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

Maya Angelou

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

Maya Angelou

Today is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.

Maya Angelou

Saturday, July 1, 2023

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

I’ve learned that to be with those I like is enough.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

What If?

I’m the reason nothing ever changes
I’m the one who holds the lock and key
When I forgive life suddenly rearranges
And I discover how suddenly I am free

Monika Aring

Friday, June 30, 2023

The technique of receiving help from the surroundings is in our attitude of giving. If we want to receive the maximum at all times, we must have an attitude of giving. “If you want to receive, you must give” is a law of nature.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

WORDS OF THE DAY

Shouganai
(Japanese ) is said in response to troubles that cannot be helped. It’s like saying, “It is what it is” or “Stuff happens.” It is the recognition that we do not have control over every situation. At the same time, ‘shouganai’ also recognizes the ability to maintain dignity despite facing inevitable challenges in life.

Ailyak
(Bulgarian, n ) The subtle art of doing everything calmly and without haste. It is similar to the famous Swahili idiom ‘Hakuna Matata’

Thursday, June 29, 2023

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it.

William James (1842-1910), American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers of the United States, and the “Father of American psychology.”

When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.

Rainer Maria Rilke

The sea is a desert of waves,

A wilderness of water.

Langston Hughes

I must be a mermaid. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.

Anais Nin

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

The Golden Rule across the World’s 5 Great Religions

Islam
Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself.
The Prophet Muhammad, Hadith

Christianity
In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.
Jesus, Matthew 7:12

Judaism
What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it.
Hillel, Talmud, Shabbath 31a

Buddhism
Treat not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.
The Buddha, Udana-Varga, 5.18

Hinduism
This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.
Mahabharata, 5:1517

You consider yourself to be an insignificant body, but within you is encapsulated the greatest universe.

Ali b. Abi Talib, Diwan

No one will reap except what they sow.

Quran 6:164

Eid Mubarak!
(“Blessed celebration!”)

There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one’s self, the very meaning of one’s soul.

Edith Wharton, American writer and designer who became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1921.

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Kahlil Gibran

Hold no man responsible for what he says in his grief.

The Talmud

Jamie Anderson

When I allow myself to feel my body, when I can inhabit it and allow myself to close off the world beyond my flesh, I become who I am- energy and spirit. I am not my mind. I am not my brain. I am stardust, comets, nebulae, and galaxies. I am trees and wind and stone. I am space. I am emptiness and wholeness at the same time. That is when my body sings to me, a glorious ancient song redolent with mystery seeking to remain mystery. Connecting to it, living with it, becoming it even for a moment, I am healed and made more.

Richard Wagamese, renowned Canadian indigenous writer and storyteller

Auguries of Innocence

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

William Blake (1757-1827), English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age.

Monday, June 26, 2023

The Window

Your body is away from me

but there is a window open

from my heart to yours.

From this window, like the moon

I keep sending news secretly.

Rumi

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.

May Sarton

Sunday, June 25, 2023

So the unwanting soul
sees what’s hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.

Lao Tzu

Self-Observation Without Judgment

Release the harsh and pointed inner
voice. it’s just a throwback to the past,
and holds no truth about this moment.

Let go of self-judgment, the old,
learned ways of beating yourself up
for each imagined inadequacy.

Allow the dialogue within the mind
to grow friendlier, and quiet. Shift
out of inner criticism and life
suddenly looks very different.

i can say this only because I make
the choice a hundred times a day to
release the voice that refuses to
acknowledge the real me.

What’s needed here isn’t
more prodding toward perfection, but
intimacy – seeing clearly, and
embracing what I see.

Love, not judgment, sows the
seeds of tranquility and change.

Danna Faulds

We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the whole universe.

Mundaka Upanishad

Saturday, June 24, 2023

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

Mary Oliver

If it is not right, do not do it, if it is not true, do not say it.

Marcus Aurelius

You become what you give your attention to…If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will.

Epictetus

Give yourself a gift, the present moment.

Marcus Aurelius

Friday, June 23, 2023

Fundamentals of a good leader? Greater ability and greater balance.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Leaders are successful by making others successful.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

To the extent that we are able to nourish ourselves from our speech and action. that is the extent to which we can nourish others.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Every day, think as you wake up, Today I am fortunate to have woken up. I am alive, I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it.

I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings.

I am going to have kind thoughts towards others. I am not going to get angry or think badly about others.

I am going to benefit others as much as I can.

The Dalai Lama

Morning

Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.

Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum.

The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.

The way she makes her curvaceous response

to the small, kind gesture.

Then laps the bowl clean.

Then wants to go out into the world

where she leaps lightly and

for no apparent reason across the lawn,

then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.

I watch her a little while, thinking:

what more could I do with wild words?

I stand in the cold kitchen,

bowing down to her.

I stand in the cold kitchen,

everything wonderful around me.

Mary Oliver

Thursday, June 22, 2023

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Viktor E. Frankl, neurologist, psychologist, Holocaust survivor, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Viktor Frankl

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

Viktor Frankl

What Life Should Be

To learn while still a child
What this life is meant to be.
To know it goes beyond myself,
It’s so much more than me.

To overcome the tragedies,
To survive the hardest times.
To face those moments filled with pain,
And still manage to be kind.

To fight for those who can’t themselves,
To always share my light.
With those who wander in the dark,
To love with all my might.

To still stand up with courage,
Though standing on my own.
To still get up and face each day,
Even when I feel alone.

To try to understand the ones
That no one cares to know.
And make them feel some value
When the world has let them go.

To be an anchor, strong and true,
That person loyal to the end.
To be a constant source of hope
To my family and my friends.

To live a life of decency,
To share my heart and soul.
To always say I’m sorry
When I’ve harmed both friend and foe.

To be proud of whom I’ve tried to be,
And this life I chose to live.
To make the most of every day
By giving all I have to give.

To me that’s what this life should be,
To me that’s what it’s for.
To take what God has given me
And make it so much more

To live a life that matters,
To be someone of great worth.
To love and be loved in return
And make my mark on Earth.

Patricia A. Fleming

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none.

When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

Chief Tecumseh, Shawnee chief and warrior

(Note: A persuasive orator, Tecumseh traveled widely, forming a Native American confederacy and promoting intertribal unity. The Shawnee Tribe is an Algonquian-speaking people, who originally occupied lands in southern Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. )

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Some Things

Some things change.
Some things stay the same.
Some things raise your blood pressure.
Some things raise your spirits.
Some things get better.
Some things don’t.

Some things can be willed into being.
Some things won’t.
Easy does it is how they do it.

Some things seem awful
until they seem full of awe.
Some things are meant to be savored.
Some things, you rush through.

Some things you survive.
Some things, be glad you come out alive,
like when you are born,
again and again and again.

Emily Lewis Penn

Poem 133: The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fish hooks or clay pots or grinding stones. But no, Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken then healed. Mead explained, that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is proof that someone has taken time to stay with the person who has fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. ‘Helping someone through difficulty is where civilization starts’ said Mead. We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.

Dr. Ira Byock, The Best Care Possible: A Physician’s Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life (Avery, 2012)

Life

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)

Happiness and freedom begin with one principle: Some things are within our control and some are not.

Epictetus (55-135 CE), Stoic philosopher

Receive without pride, let go without attachment.

Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE), Roman emperor

Monday, June 19, 2023

Human Family

I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.

Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.

The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.

I’ve sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land,
I’ve seen the wonders of the world
not yet one common man.

I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I’ve not seen any two
who really were the same.

Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.

We love and lose in China,
we weep on England’s moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.

We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we’re the same.

I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.

We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.

Maya Angelou

Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.

Maya Angelou

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

Maya Angelou

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.

James Baldwin

As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.

Nelson Mandela

Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I Dream a World

I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom’s way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind-
Of such I dream, my world!

Langston Hughes

Sunday, June 18, 2023

Pirkei Avot means “Ethics of the Fathers” and is one of sixty-three dissertations of the Mishnah, a foundational Jewish text which was codified by the 3rd century C.E. It is a collection of universal ethics and moral insights from revered Jewish sages.

He [Rabbi Hillel] used to say: If I am not for me, who will be for me? And when I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, then when?

Pirkei Avot

Ben Zoma says: Who is the wise one? He who learns from all men…
Who is the mighty one? He who conquers his impulse…
Who is the rich one? He who is happy with his lot…
Who is honored? He who honors the created beings…

Pirkei Avot

The more Torah, the more life; the more sitting [in the company of scholars], the more wisdom; the more counsel, the more understanding; the more charity, the more peace.

Pirkei Avot

That’s what I consider true generosity: You give your all and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.

Simone de Beauvoir

No man stands taller than when he stoops to help a child.

Abraham Lincoln

When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.

William Shakespeare

Every father should remember one day his child will follow his example, not his advice.

Charles Kettering

Saturday, June 17, 2023

Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

Albert Camus

YESEES AND NOEES

The Yesees said yes to anything
That anyone suggested.
The Noees said no to everything
Unless it was proven and tested.
So the Yesees all died of much too much
And the Noees all died of fright,
But somehow I think the Thinkforyourselfees
All came out all right.

Shel Silverstein

LISTEN TO THE MUSTN’TS

Listen to the MUSTN’TS, child,
Listen to the DON’TS
Listen to the SHOULDN’TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON’TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me—
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.

Shel Silverstein

Friday, June 16, 2023

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and
milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.

e.e. cummings

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

W. H. Davies

Thursday, June 15, 2023

Fire

Judy Brown

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

O how I laugh when I think of my vague, indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

Henry David Thoreau

WORDS OF THE DAY

Whakakoakoa
(Māori, v ) – To cheer up.

Abditory
(Latin, n ) – A place into which you can disappear; a hiding place

Hanyauku
(Kwangali – Namibia, v ) – To walk on tiptoes across hot desert sand

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Though we may be learned by another’s knowledge, we can never be wise but by our own experience.

Michel de Montaigne

Sometimes it is a good choice not to choose at all.

Michel de Montaigne

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.

Michel de Montaigne

Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.

Hermann Hesse

(Note: Hermann Karl Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual’s search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. )

Monday, June 12, 2023

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?

Mary Oliver

Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.

Seneca

When you teach your child, you teach your child’s child.

The Talmud

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Blaise Pascal

Sunday, June 11, 2023

Self

Once I freed myself of my duties to tasks and people and went down to the cleansing sea…
The air was like wine to my spirit,
The sky bathed my eyes with infinity,
The sun followed me, casting golden snares on the tide,
And the ocean—masses of molten surfaces, faintly gray-blue—sang to my heart…
Then I found myself, all here in the body and brain, and all there on the shore:
Content to be myself: free, and strong, and enlarged:
Then I knew the depths of myself were the depths of space.
And all living beings were of those depths (my brothers and sisters)
And that by going inward and away from duties, cities, street-cars and greetings,
I was dipping behind all surfaces, piercing cities and people,
And entering in and possessing them, more than a brother,
The surge of all life in them and in me…
So I swore I would be myself (there by the ocean)
And I swore I would cease to neglect myself, but would take myself as my mate,
Solemn marriage and deep: midnights of thought to be:
Long mornings of sacred communion, and twilights of talk,
Myself and I, long parted, clasping and married till death.

James Oppenheim

I have a theory that the moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

Henry Miller (1891-1980), award-winning American novelist

Saturday, June 10, 2023

May the sun bring you new energy by day,
may the moon softly restore you by night,
may the rain wash away your worries,
may the breeze blow new strength into your being,
may you walk gently through the world
and know it’s beauty all the days of your life.

Apache Blessing

Friday, June 9, 2023

The Washington Post
May 18, 2023

Why birds and their songs are good for our mental health

(Listen Here)

There is a saying in Tibetan, “Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.” No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.

Dalai Lama

This is really why I made my daughters learn to garden – so they would always have a mother to love them, long after I am gone.

Robin Wall Kimmerer

If I had influence with the good fairy… I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.

Rachel Carson

Not in the clamor of the crowded street,

Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,

But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thursday, June 8, 2023

When you are in doubt, be still, and wait; When doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage. So long as mists envelop you, be still; Be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists, as it surely will. Then act with courage.

Ponca Chief White Eagle (1825-1914)

Still Water

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us, that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.

W.B. Yeats

Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Cosmic Consciousness should not be considered as something far beyond the reach of a normal person. The state of Cosmic Consciousness should be the state of normal human consciousness. Any state below Cosmic Consciousness can only be taken to be subnormal human consciousness. The human mind should be a cosmically conscious mind.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Glennon Doyle, Untamed

Tuesday, June 6, 2023

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don’t bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. Numerous literary critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in all of world literature.

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.

William Shakespeare

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. 

Confucius

Monday, June 5, 2023

Question: If you could give any advice for the day, what would it be?

Walk, don’t run.
That’s it.
Walk, don’t run. Slow down, breathe
deeply, and open your eyes because there’s
a whole world right here within this one. The
bush doesn’t suddenly catch on fire, it’s been
burning the whole time. Moses is simply moving
slowly enough to see it. And when he
does, he takes off his sandals. Not because
the ground has suddenly become holy, but
because he’s just now becoming aware that
the ground has been holy the whole time.
Efficiency is not God’s highest goal for your life,
neither is busyness,
or how many things you can get done in one day,
or speed,
or even success.
But walking-
which leads to seeing-
now that’s something.
That’s the invitation for every one of us today
and every day, in every conversation, interaction,
event, and moment: to walk, not run. And in doing
so, to see a whole world right here within this one.

Rob Bell

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

Martin Buber (1878-1965), Austrian and Israeli philosopher

Sunday, June 4, 2023

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes everything is an emergency.

Natalie Goldberg

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

Leo Buscaglia

When I Run After What I Think I Want Rumi

When I run after what I think I want,
my days are a furnace of distress and anxiety,
if I sit in my own place of patience,
what I need flows to me, and without any pain,
from this, I understand that what I want also wants me,
and is looking for me and attracting me,
there’s a great secret in this for all who can grasp it.

Rumi

Saturday, June 3, 2023

The Early Morning

The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:
The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.
The moon on my left and the dawn on my right.
My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.

Hilaire Belloc

Trees

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer

Friday, June 2, 2023

Beannacht

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.
And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets in to you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green,
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.

John O’Donohue

WORD OF THE DAY

Elysian
(Greek, adj ) – Beautiful or creative; divinely inspired; peaceful and perfect. “The Elysian-like clouds would be heavenly to touch.” Origin: The Elysian Fields, also called Elysium, are the final resting place of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous in Greek mythology.

Thursday, June 1, 2023

June 1 is the first day of “meteorological summer” as opposed to June 21 which is the first day of “astronomical summer.” To celebrate…

June

The sun is rich
And gladly pays
In golden hours,
Silver days,

And long green weeks
That never end.
School’s out.
The time Is ours to spend.

There’s Little League,
Hopscotch, the creek,
And, after supper,
Hide-and-seek.

The live-long light
Is like a dream,
and freckles come
Like flies to cream.

John Updike

I’m not trying to sound like a superhero. There were times when my resolve was challenged, and I had to reset. As I write this now in my 80s, I can say to you with absolute assurance that a lifetime can zip by in what feels like a few turns of a kaleidoscope. Unless we make a conscious effort to achieve our own personal human revolution, too many of us end up spending our precious days just busily running around, but never getting anywhere.

We may remain stuck in the lower worlds – consumed by ego, fears, and desires in the shallow realm of our lesser self. But when we do our best to lift ourselves up by increasing our self-love, thoughtfulness, and kindness in all our behaviors, we can then live out a true revolution of the heart.

I believe that, for much of human history, there has been a common, yet deluded belief that the key to happiness is found in controlling or changing our external world, our environment, our economies, our politics, or our social structures.

We humans have devoted a lot of time and energy to these endeavors, while dedicating far less effort to transforming our internal world, which is what dictates the way we actually live our lives.

Tina Turner, excerpted from HAPPINESS BECOMES YOU: A GUIDE TO CHANGING YOUR LIFE FOR GOOD

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.

Doug Larson

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

George Burns

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

When you love someone, you have to offer that person the best you have. The best thing we can offer another person is our true presence.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Many people think excitement is happiness…But when you are excited you are not peaceful. True happiness is based on peace.

Thich Nhat Hanh

A quiet mind does not mean there will be no thoughts or mental movements at all, but these will be on the surface, and you will feel your true Being within, separate from them, observing but not carried away.

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950)

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

A billion stars go spinning through the night,

Blazing high above your head.

But in you is the presence that

Will be, when all the stars are dead.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), renowned Austrian poet

To be a strong courageous healthy spirit — delighting in the natural world, seeing it with the innocence of a child to whom each commonplace stone, blade of grass & sapling is a miracle. That is the secret of eternal youth. Happy is the man who can go out into the fields & woods and hills, a free innocent being, unburdened by the world’s smartness & sophistication, its smug acceptance of fleshly indulgences, to whom life & nature are eternal mysteries.

Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967), American painter and visionary artist, known for his passionate watercolors of nature scenes and townscapes.

Monday, May 29, 2023

No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.

St. Ambrose

Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863

Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.

Khalil Gibran

Sunday, May 28, 2023

Gratitude

I thank thee, friend, for the beautiful thought
That in words well chosen thou gavest to me,
Deep in the life of my soul it has wrought
With its own rare essence to ever imbue me,
To gleam like a star over devious ways,
To bloom like a flower on the dreariest days
Better such gift from thee to me
Than gold of the hills or pearls of the sea.

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942), best-known for her classic novel for children, Anne of Green Gables.

The secret to living well and longer is: eat half, walk double, laugh triple, and love without measure.

Tibetan proverb

Saturday, May 27, 2023

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Sir Isaac Newton

(Note: Newton is known for devising the law of universal gravitation, discovering calculus, developing the three laws of motion, advancements in early modern chemistry, inventing the reflecting telescope, and proposing theories of light and color. )

If you are on a road to nowhere – find another road.

Ashanti Proverb from Ghana

The death of an elderly person is like a burning library.

African proverb

Patience attracts happiness; it brings near that which is far.

Swahili proverb

Friday, May 26, 2023

Unique

Because I know who I am,
I’m at ease and free.
I can’t be like others,
And they can’t be me.

I’ve got fading scars,
An unusual physique,
But it all works together
To make me unique.

I’ve got hidden strengths,
Some obvious flaws.
Still I am who I am,
For better, for worse.

I don’t have to blend in;
I won’t live a lie.
I can’t please everyone;
I won’t even try.

Some call me proud;
Others stare at me in alarm.
But I’m not one to bother,
Because I know who I am

Abimbola T. Alabi

Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Note: Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. Waldo’s birthday is May 25, 1803. )

Thursday, May 25, 2023

ABOUT CROWS

The old crow is getting slow;
the young crow is not.
Of what the young crow does not know,
the old crow knows a lot.

At knowing things, the old crow is still
the young crow’s master.
What does the old crow not know?
How to go faster.

The young crow flies above, below, and rings
around the slow old crow.
What does the fast young crow not know?
WHERE TO GO.

John Ciardi

Solar

Suspended lion face
Spilling at the centre
Of an unfurnished sky
How still you stand,
And how unaided
Single stalkless flower
You pour unrecompensed.

The eye sees you
Simplified by distance
Into an origin,
Your petalled head of flames
Continuously exploding.
Heat is the echo of your
Gold.

Coined there among
Lonely horizontals
You exist openly.
Our needs hourly
Climb and return like angels.
Unclosing like a hand,
You give for ever.

Philip Larkin

(Note: Larkin was one of post-war England’s most famous poets, and was commonly referred to as “England’s other Poet Laureate” until his death in 1985. Indeed, when the position of laureate became vacant in 1984, many poets and critics favored Larkin’s appointment, but Larkin preferred to avoid the limelight. )

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

Maya Angelou

O God, help me to believe the truth about myself—no matter how beautiful it is.

Macrina Weiderkher, Benedictine nun

Denise Levertov

Tuesday, May 23, 2023

The Room of Ancient Keys

Elena Mikhalkova

The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to decline, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. This is something I learned from myths. What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light? Or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?

Joseph Campbell, author of The Power of Myth

Monday, May 22, 2023

There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself—
Finite infinity!

Emily Dickinson

I looked through others’ windows
On an enchanted earth
But out of my own window–
solitude and dearth.

And yet there is a mystery
I cannot understand–
That others through my window
See an enchanted land.

Jessie B. Rittenhouse

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity… and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.

William Blake

Sunday, May 21, 2023

RISK

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.

To reach out to another is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing
your true self.

To place your ideas and dreams
before a crowd is to risk their loss.

To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk to failure.

But risks must be taken because
the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.

The person who risks nothing, does nothing,
has nothing is nothing.

He may avoid suffering and sorrow,
But he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live.

Chained by his servitude he is a slave
who has forfeited all freedom.

Only a person who risks is free.

William Arthur Ward

Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields… Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.

Mary Oliver

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

Mary Oliver

Saturday, May 20, 2023

This Is the Time to Be Slow

This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.

John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

WORD OF THE DAY

Tyromancy
(Greek, n ) – Divination involving observation of cheese as it coagulates. It is derived from the Greek “tūros” for cheese and “manteia” for divination. In the Middle Ages, the shape, number of holes, and patterns of mold were often used to foretell money, love, and death. In some villages, a young lady or man would divine the names of their future spouse by writing the names of prospective suitors on pieces of cheese. The one whose piece of cheese grew mold first was deemed the true love match.

Friday, May 19, 2023

When I Am Among Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.

Mary Oliver

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. A genius is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework.

Thomas Edison

Most of the exercise I get is from standing and walking all day from one laboratory table to another. I derive more enjoyment, benefit and entertainment from this than some of my friends and competitors get from playing games like golf.

Thomas Edison

I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for the person with a thousand ideas, who actually does nothing.

Thomas Edison

Go then if you must, but remember, no matter how foolish your deeds, those who love you will love you still.

Sophocles

The truth is always the strongest argument.

Sophocles

Look and you will find it – what is unsought will go undetected.

Sophocles

Thursday, May 18, 2023

The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations.

Albert Einstein

Who Does He Think She Is?

I asked the Zebra:

Are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?

And the zebra asked me:

And on and on and on and on
And on and on he went.

I’ll never ask a zebra

About stripes

Again

Shel Silverstein

Crystal Ball

Come see your life in my crystal glass—
Twenty-five cents is all you pay.
Let me look into your past—
Here’s what you had for lunch today:
Tuna salad and mashed potatoes,
Green pea soup and apple juice,
Collard greens and stewed tomatoes,
Chocolate milk and lemon mousse.
You admit I’ve told it all?
Well, I know it, I confess,
Not by looking in my ball,
But just by looking at your dress.

Shel Silverstein

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

When an old woman rebuked him for his conciliatory attitude toward the South, which she felt should be “destroyed” after the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln replied, “Madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.

Sun Tzu, Chinese military general, strategist, philosopher, and author of The Art of War

When one treats people with benevolence, justice, and righteousness, and reposes confidence in them, the army will be united in mind and all will be happy to serve their leaders.

Sun Tzu

Rewards for good service should not be deferred a single day.

Sun Tzu

Heyam duhham anagatam
(“Avert the danger which has not yet come.” )

Vedic proverb

Yogastha kuru karmani.
(“Established in Being perform action.” )

Bhagavad Gita