Wisdom comes with winters.
~ Oscar Wilde
Walking on the land or digging in the fine soil I am intensely aware that time quivers slightly, changes occurring in imperceptible and minute ways, accumulating so subtly that they seem not to exist. Yet the tiny shifts in everything–cell replication, the rain of dust motes, lengthening hair, wind-pushed rocks–press inexorably on and on.
~ Annie Proulx, Bird Cloud
Continue reading “A Monday meander: Transitions and thresholds”
When I walk — which I do every day, as basic sanity-maintenance, whether in the forest or the cemetery or the city street — I walk the same routes, walk along loops, loops I often retrace multiple times in a single walk. This puzzles people. Some simply don’t get the appeal of such recursiveness. Others judge it as dull. But I walk to think more clearly, which means to traverse the world with ever-broadening scope of attention to reality, ever-widening circles of curiosity, ever-deepening interest in the ceaselessly flickering constellation of details within and without.
~ Maria Popova, Brain Pickings (Loops, Language, the Paradoxical Loneliness of “I Love You,” and What Keeps Love Alive)
To wonder is to begin to understand.
~Aristotle
Somehow we weathered and witnessed
A nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
There is always light
if only we’re brave enough to see it
if only we’re brave enough to be it.— Amanda Gorman
(In case you missed it, you can watch the full reading of this wonderful poem here.)
Myth is a manifestation in symbolic images, in metaphorical images, of the energies of the organs of the body in conflict with each other.
~ Joseph Campbell
It was out of the dynamic of cosmic celebration that we were created in the first place. We are to become celebration and generosity, burst into self-awareness. What is the human? The human is a space, an opening, where the universe celebrates its existence.
~ Brian Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon: A Cosmic Creation Story
Wishing you the happiest of holidays possible given the circumstances this year. Find the light in the darkness and allow it to grow. Or, as the song goes, may your days be merry and bright.
For those that might want a little music with that: Sunny Christmas. It’s a cheerful song with wonderful lyrics. Enjoy.
Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.
~ Harriet Goldhor Lerner
Gain health from lusty, heroic exercise, from free, firm-nerved adventures without anxiety in them, with rhythmic leg motion in runs over boulders requiring quick decision for every step. Fording streams, tingling with flesh brushes as we slide down white slopes thatched with close snow-pressed chaparral, half swimming or flying or slipping — all these make good counter-irritants. Then enjoy the utter peace and solemnity of the trees and stars… Find a mysterious presence in a thousand coy hiding things.
~ John Muir
Before change can happen, a clear choice must be made. I believe we all have the freedom to choose the direction of our lives and the values we stand for. We have only to embrace our beliefs at a deep level and our path of change will open. Profound change begins in the heart. From the moment we embrace the clear intention for change, each of us according to our individual natures is inspired to act in a way to bring about a healthy and benign outcome. All life will conspire to bring this about. If enough of us decide to make the change, to surrender ourselves to it, transformation will happen. I have faith in our capacity, as beings of love, to transcend the challenges we face on Earth, should we choose to.
~ Ranchor Prime, The Eight Elements
breezes at dawn 