Here is a moment of extravagant beauty: I drink its liquid from the shells of my hands and almost all of it runs sparkling through my fingers: but beauty is like that, it is a fraction of a second, quickness of a flash and then immediately it escapes.
~ Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life
Continue reading “A Monday meander: Rainy days and hurricanes”
Silence is like a cradle holding our endeavors and our will; a silent spaciousness sustains us in our work and at the same time connects us to larger worlds that, in the busyness of our daily struggle to achieve, we have not yet investigated. Silence is the soul’s break for freedom.
~David Whyte
Listen to the silence as it echoes around you. Ancient spirits dance to it.
~Amber Coverdalle Sumrall
Take a journey into the things which you are carrying, the known —
not into the unknown — into what you already know:
your pleasures, your delights, your despairs, your sorrows.
Take a journey into that, that is all you have.~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly.
~ John Pilger
Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?
~ Bertrand Russell
Ask yourself: How much time do you spend just observing your surroundings? Driving or navigating while walking on busy streets doesn’t count. And how much time do you spend with your eyes glued to some type of screen? Most of your impressions of the world are mediated. They have been altered by someone else, who wants you to see things in a certain way — and they are usually trying to influence us for their own reasons. As a society, we seem to passively accept and even embrace this troubling condition of the electronic age.
Poet Theodore Roethke writes: “I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.” I agree, and believe that the world itself is fascinating, deserving of our attention, and far more interesting than anything we might say about it — in any medium.
~ David Ulrich, Zen Camera: Creative Awakening with a Daily Practice in Photography
In the summer, the days were long, stretching into each other. Out of school, everything was on pause and yet happening at the same time, this collection of weeks when anything was possible.
~ Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride
“Summer, after all, is a time when wonderful things can happen to quiet people. For those few months, you’re not required to be who everyone thinks you are, and that cut-grass smell in the air and the chance to dive into the deep end of a pool give you a courage you don’t have the rest of the year. You can be grateful and easy, with no eyes on you, and no past. Summer just opens the door and lets you out.”
―Deb Caletti, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
Continue reading “A Monday meander: Summer days and summer fun”
“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best,” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.
~ A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
