Moving right along with time

When the moon sang to the clouds.

What year is it in your imagination?

~ Lynda Barry

I looked over at my neighbor, the song sparrow, and thought about how just a few years ago, I wouldn’t have known its name, might not have even known it was a sparrow, might not have even seen it at all. How lonely that world seemed in comparison to this one! But the sparrow and I were no longer strangers. It was no stretch of the imagination, nor even of science, to think that we were related. We were both from the same place (Earth), made of the same stuff. And most important, we were both alive.

~ Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing

A Monday meander: The Art of Self Care

We’ve had quite a few foggy mornings lately. Sometimes the fog sticks around all day.

Self-care is never a selfish act – it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.

~ Parker J. Palmer

This is the only advice I offer you. Pick the small thing, and carry it on. Let it change your life.

~ Anna White, Mended

Season’s greetings

This is Tag, an Elf on the Shelf. This is where he ended up on Christmas Eve.

This is the pruning period, when life can look pretty drab; the dead branches of our old habits will be lying all around us and the new leaves will not yet have begun to grow.

But for all of us, if we keep at our pruning carefully, the spring is bound to come.

There will still be gardening to do, but when we see our new ways blossoming and the good fruit we have begun to bear for others, this pruning of self-will will be a source of lasting satisfaction.

~ Eknath Easwaran

A Monday meander: More than words

Sunrise this morning, as the sun painted the clouds.

Most of the time the universe speaks to us very quietly
in pockets of silence
in nature
in the shape of clouds
in coincidences
in forgotten memories
in moments of solitude
in small tugs at our hearts.

~ Yumi Sakugawa, Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One With the Universe

A Monday meander: The fawn and the heron

Once upon a time, a Great Blue Heron stood on the bank of a pond, minding his own business whilst trying to stay warm on a cold day…

Truly, there is magic in fairy tales.  For it takes but a simply-uttered ‘Once upon a time…’ to allure and spellbind an audience.

~ Rachelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway

The unrealistic nature of these tales (which narrowminded rationalists object to) is an important device, because it makes obvious that the fairy tales’ concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner process taking place in an individual.

~ Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment