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If you have something important to say - whisper.
Nassim Taleb
Nassim Taleb
"Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.Understand through the stillness.
Act out of stillness.
Conquer in the stillness.
In order for the eye to perceive colour,
it must divest itself of all colours."
Dag Hammarskjöld (Markings)
Act out of stillness.
Conquer in the stillness.
In order for the eye to perceive colour,
it must divest itself of all colours."
Dag Hammarskjöld (Markings)
"I want to thank anyone who spends a part of their day creating. I don’t care if it’s a book, a film, a painting, a dance, a piece of theater, a piece of music. Anybody who spends part of their day sharing their experience with us. I think this world would be unlivable without art."
Steven Soderbergh
Steven Soderbergh
"Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it."
Viktor E. Frankl
Viktor E. Frankl
"It is one of the great paradoxes of solitude, that it offers us not an escape, not a paradise, not a dwelling place where we can haughtily maintain our integrity by ignoring a vicious and corrupt social world, but a way back to that world, and a new motive for being there. Moreover, it can enliven a new sense of what companionship means — and, with it, a courtesy and hospitability that goes beyond anything good manners might decree. Because, no matter who I am, and no matter what I might or might not have achieved, my very life depends on being prepared, always, for the one visitor who never comes, but might arrive at any moment, from the woods or from the town."
John Burnside
John Burnside
"In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-known-ness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs."
Daniel J Boorstin (Historian, professor, attorney & writer: 1914-2004)
Daniel J Boorstin (Historian, professor, attorney & writer: 1914-2004)
"Evolution is empathy-based. It finds the most efficient route to compassion - navigating through treacherous waters, yet reaching the 'other shore' in a multitude of arrivals. . ."
Genoa Bliven (Kilauea, Hawaii)
Genoa Bliven (Kilauea, Hawaii)
"It is no exaggeration to say that, for Baudelaire, the word vast is a metaphysical argument by means of which the vast world and vast thoughts are united. But actually this grandeur does not come from the spectacle witnessed but from the unfathomable depths of vast thoughts. . . Under the banner of the word vast, the spirit finds its synthetic being. The word vast reconciles contraries. As vast as night and light. . . “
Gaston Bachelard (The Poetics of Space - Page 192)
Gaston Bachelard (The Poetics of Space - Page 192)
“The changing wisdom of successive generations discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition — and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation — and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts, to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity — the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.”
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
"When the power of love
Overcomes the love of power
The world will know peace."
Jimi Hendrix
Overcomes the love of power
The world will know peace."
Jimi Hendrix
"A house is first and foremost a geometrical object, one which we are tempted to analyze rationally. Its prime reality is visible and tangible, made of well hewn solids and well fitted framework. It is dominated by straight lines, the plumb-line having marked it with its discipline and balance. A geometrical object of this kind ought to resist metaphors that welcome the human body and the human soul. But transportation to the human plane takes place immediately whenever a house is considered as space for cheer and intimacy, space that is supposed to condense and defend intimacy. Independent of all rationality, the dream world beckons. . . “
Gaston Bachelard (The Poetics of Space, pages 47 & 48)
Gaston Bachelard (The Poetics of Space, pages 47 & 48)
CAN YOU IMAGINE?
For example, what the trees do
not only in lightning storms
or the watery dark of a summer's night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now - whenever
we're not looking. Surely you can't imagine
they don't dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade - surely you can't imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can't imagine patience, and happiness, like that.
Mary Oliver
For example, what the trees do
not only in lightning storms
or the watery dark of a summer's night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now - whenever
we're not looking. Surely you can't imagine
they don't dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade - surely you can't imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can't imagine patience, and happiness, like that.
Mary Oliver
“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 … 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 thing. . . "
Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn
Courage is a word that tempts us to think outwardly, to run bravely against opposing fire, to do something under besieging circumstance, and perhaps, above all, to be seen to do it in public, to show courage; to be celebrated in story, rewarded with medals, given the accolade, but a look at its linguistic origins leads us in a more interior direction and toward its original template, the old Norman French, Coeur, or heart.
Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. Whether we stay or whether we go - to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made.
David Whyte (from Readers' Circle Essay, "Courage")
Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. Whether we stay or whether we go - to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made.
David Whyte (from Readers' Circle Essay, "Courage")
"You don’t fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It’s like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else’s planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colours people wear. It is a big surprise falling in love because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signalled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump."
Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson
"To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the human condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it’s based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from its fragility."
Martha Nussbaum
Martha Nussbaum
"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open."
Martha Graham
Martha Graham
". . .We and many other animals sleep and wake in cycles that repeat every twenty-four hours. Some ocean protists, dinomastigotes, luminesce when dusk comes, ceasing two hours later. So hooked are they into the cosmic rhythm of Earth that even back in the laboratory, away from the sea, they know the sun has set. Many similar examples abound because living matter is not an island but part of the cosmic matter around it, dancing to the beat of the universe.
Life is a material phenomenon so finely tuned and nuanced to its cosmic domicile that the relatively minor shift of angle and temperature change as the tilted Earth moves in its course around the sun is enough to alter life’s mood, to bring on or silence the song of bird, bullfrog, cricket and circada. But the steady background beat of Earth turning and orbiting in its cosmic environment provides more than a metronome for daily and seasonal lives. Larger rhythms, more difficult to discern, can also be heard. . ."
Lynn Margulis & Dorion Sagan (What is Life? Pg. 240 & 241)
Life is a material phenomenon so finely tuned and nuanced to its cosmic domicile that the relatively minor shift of angle and temperature change as the tilted Earth moves in its course around the sun is enough to alter life’s mood, to bring on or silence the song of bird, bullfrog, cricket and circada. But the steady background beat of Earth turning and orbiting in its cosmic environment provides more than a metronome for daily and seasonal lives. Larger rhythms, more difficult to discern, can also be heard. . ."
Lynn Margulis & Dorion Sagan (What is Life? Pg. 240 & 241)
". . . May your hands weather with grace. May your fingers smell good. May chill on your arms keep you alive to your skin as much as warmth might do. May you grieve when you need to and know your own lacks, with matter-of-fact awareness, like you know the landscape of leaving where you sleep to begin the day. Leave the sleep. Begin the day. Offer things. Work. Build. Step toward others. Take a lean and a fall as a chance to spin on the floor on your back. Gather your courage. Make beautiful meals. Know your gifts and delight in them with specific, attentive vigor. Shovel. Pedal. Cruise. Oh, my darlings and others, listen as if you mean it, as if it matters, as if that act, in itself, were consuming and a kind of completion. When the moment opens, answer. The toilet might be running again in the other room. Get up, shake the handle and keep going. If the water goes quiet, there will still be ticking. We are our ordinary lives, and they have such depths and textures. We brush against the nap in relationship, or we're pressed to the plush, or something is jabbing, the plastic stem of an old tag, a broken zipper, but we dress in the fabrics of the lives near ours, however we bring them near. Such clothes. Such colors. . . "
Susan Stinson
Susan Stinson
LOVE
Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills--
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.
Czeslaw Milosz
Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills--
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.
Czeslaw Milosz
“Writing is only required not to betray ... the blood of the people. Writing cannot stop a war but it can preserve its values by creating beauty.”
Khaled Khalifa | No Knives in This City’s Kitchen
Khaled Khalifa | No Knives in This City’s Kitchen
“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 … implanted in the human soul."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Best Thing Since …
On warm water
sprinkle yeast sugar
add oil.
Wait.
On long quiet uncommitted days I bake bread. I do it for the long and the quiet more than food. For enchantment. After ten minutes in the sun the yeast forms muddy scum on the water like the first self-replicating soup, like a gob of mythological spit that gives life to the clay.
Stir in the warmed flour
knead till smooth.
Wait.
As I knead, my knuckles and the heels of my hands indent the dough like prints in an ancient mud that was soft round the toes. The feet walked on. But we know they walked by their prints. In another place, rocks bear 30,000 year old traces of the grinding of grain. Intimations of bread.
A little salt. Knead,
shape the dough.
Wait.
Wheat, rice, maize changed us. They were part of the recipe for civilisation: take grain, sow, harvest, build an oven, a house, a city. The iceman from the copper age had grain in his stomach. An iron age man preserved by peat had eaten charred bread as his last meal.
Bend into the heat
from the oven, place the tray
in the centre.
Wait.
The smell of bread baking fills the cavities of the house, of the body. It says, stand still, breathe deep. It insists that mouths be moist and ready.
Set plates on the table.
Bring in extra chairs.
Time curves from then to here and back.
Now.
Carolyn McCurdie (New Zealand)
The key to the future of the world is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known.
Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
A miracle is not the intersession of an external divine agency in violation of the laws of physics. A miracle is simply something that is impossible from an old story but possible from within a new one. It is an expansion of what is possible.
Charles Eisenstein
Charles Eisenstein
Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.
Simone Weil | Gravity and Grace
Simone Weil | Gravity and Grace
". . . Is art’s purpose to do things outside its own existence? Does art change anything by its existence or non-existence? Should it? I come down firmly on both sides. And in either way of looking, I’d argue that art, if it is genuinely art, is a force for the good.
I know I would not want a vision of art that is purely utilitarian—that would not be not art, it would be advertising or propaganda. A sonnet is neither a wrench nor a voting booth. And yet, even useless joy is not inconsequential. Joy is reasonless and “accomplishes” nothing, yet is an indispensable enlargement of measure in any life. Why do we want justice, or any other diminishment of suffering, if not for the increase of simple happiness it brings? Or why would we want what Buddhism might call a right sorrow, for that matter, as we—I at least—do want that? We know when a pool is clarified, when it is muddied. We know when a poem of darkness is opulent, in its saying, in its relationship to existence—Hopkins’s “Carrion Comfort,” for example—and that the existence of opulent grief, fully offered, is a counterweight even to despair.
I’m not saying that art is a matter of beauty, solace, or calmness, though it can be, and that can be welcome. I’m not saying that art is about rectification of character or making visible the existence of injustice, though it can be, and that can be welcome. I suppose I’m saying that good art is a truing of vision, in the way that a saw is trued in the saw shop, to cut more cleanly. And that anything that lessens our astigmatisms of being or makes more magnificent the eye, ear, tongue, and heart cannot help but help a person better meet the larger decisions that we, as individuals and in aggregate, ponder. . . "
Jane Hirshfield | Why Write Poetry? Psychology Today
I know I would not want a vision of art that is purely utilitarian—that would not be not art, it would be advertising or propaganda. A sonnet is neither a wrench nor a voting booth. And yet, even useless joy is not inconsequential. Joy is reasonless and “accomplishes” nothing, yet is an indispensable enlargement of measure in any life. Why do we want justice, or any other diminishment of suffering, if not for the increase of simple happiness it brings? Or why would we want what Buddhism might call a right sorrow, for that matter, as we—I at least—do want that? We know when a pool is clarified, when it is muddied. We know when a poem of darkness is opulent, in its saying, in its relationship to existence—Hopkins’s “Carrion Comfort,” for example—and that the existence of opulent grief, fully offered, is a counterweight even to despair.
I’m not saying that art is a matter of beauty, solace, or calmness, though it can be, and that can be welcome. I’m not saying that art is about rectification of character or making visible the existence of injustice, though it can be, and that can be welcome. I suppose I’m saying that good art is a truing of vision, in the way that a saw is trued in the saw shop, to cut more cleanly. And that anything that lessens our astigmatisms of being or makes more magnificent the eye, ear, tongue, and heart cannot help but help a person better meet the larger decisions that we, as individuals and in aggregate, ponder. . . "
Jane Hirshfield | Why Write Poetry? Psychology Today
Have you ever felt that the social justice work you’re involved in is merely addressing symptoms rather than the underlying cause of what ails us?
That’s what I started to worry after forty years of engagement in many creative and inspiring initiatives as a community-minded attorney, psychotherapist, and social activist. Increasingly I found myself yearning for a way to meaningfully challenge the deeper cultural forces that are creating an ever coarsening, unjust, and inequitable world.
At its core, the problem we face is values-based. There is a specific set of values that drives decision-making in virtually every area of our lives and, so long as they predominate, we will never meaningfully diverge from our current course. The sensible response? To embrace a very different set of values that I call “decency”: Respect; understanding and empathy; acceptance and appreciation; fairness and justice. And to practice them “radically”: At all times and in every area of living.
Jeff Garson - from his Tikkun article titled 'The Case for Radical Decency'
That’s what I started to worry after forty years of engagement in many creative and inspiring initiatives as a community-minded attorney, psychotherapist, and social activist. Increasingly I found myself yearning for a way to meaningfully challenge the deeper cultural forces that are creating an ever coarsening, unjust, and inequitable world.
At its core, the problem we face is values-based. There is a specific set of values that drives decision-making in virtually every area of our lives and, so long as they predominate, we will never meaningfully diverge from our current course. The sensible response? To embrace a very different set of values that I call “decency”: Respect; understanding and empathy; acceptance and appreciation; fairness and justice. And to practice them “radically”: At all times and in every area of living.
Jeff Garson - from his Tikkun article titled 'The Case for Radical Decency'
“Humanity must be served by wealth, not ruled by it.”
Pope Francis
Pope Francis
"Joseph Campbell was in Japan for a conference on religion and he overheard another American delegate - a social philosopher from New York - say to a Shinto priest, 'We've been now to a good many ceremonies and have seen quite a few of your shrines but I don't get your ideology. I don't get your theology. The Japanese paused as though in deep thought and then slowly shook his head, 'I think we don't have ideology' he said. "We don't have theology. We dance..'"
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers
What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world.
G K Chesterson
G K Chesterson
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Marianne Williamson
Marianne Williamson
“An honorable human relationship – that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love" – is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.
It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.
It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.”
Adrienne Rich
It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.
It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.
It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.”
Adrienne Rich
WHO LEARNS FROM MY LESSONS COMPLETE?
. . . It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt, or the untruth of a single second;
I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten billions of years, Nor plann'd and built one thing after another, as an architect plans and builds a house.
I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.
Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal; I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and how I was conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful; And pass'd from a babe, in the creeping trance of a couple of summers and winters, to articulate and walk--All this is equally wonderful.
And that my Soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful. And that I can think such thoughts as these, is just as wonderful; And that I can remind you, and you think them, and know them to be true, is just as wonderful.
And that the moon spins round the earth, and on with the earth, is equally wonderful, And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars, is equally wonderful.
Walt Whitman
. . . It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so exactly in its orbit forever and ever, without one jolt, or the untruth of a single second;
I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten billions of years, Nor plann'd and built one thing after another, as an architect plans and builds a house.
I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman, Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.
Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal; I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and how I was conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful; And pass'd from a babe, in the creeping trance of a couple of summers and winters, to articulate and walk--All this is equally wonderful.
And that my Soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see each other, is every bit as wonderful. And that I can think such thoughts as these, is just as wonderful; And that I can remind you, and you think them, and know them to be true, is just as wonderful.
And that the moon spins round the earth, and on with the earth, is equally wonderful, And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars, is equally wonderful.
Walt Whitman
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, Providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
Goethe
Goethe
One is to ask and refrain from asking; to struggle and to refrain from struggle; to think deeply and to refrain from over-thinking in order simply to be present without fretting – in one’s body and one’s soul, at one's desk and chair, in one's factory or studio, feeding the birds that come to the table, walking beside the surf, sitting patiently beneath the apple tree knowing the fruit is ripening as it should. . .
Melissa Green
Melissa Green
Until we stop ourselves or, more often, have been stopped, we hope to put certain of life's events 'behind us' and get on with our living. After we stop we see that certain of life's issues will be with us for as long as we live. We will pass through them again and again, each time with a new story, each time with a greater understanding, until they become indistinguishable from our blessings and our wisdom. It's the way life teaches us to live.
Rachel Naomi Remen
Rachel Naomi Remen
Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it's beauty.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Waste no time or energy dwelling on negative and destructive thoughts, dwell only on the very best in everything and everyone around you. You carry it out for a while and then you forget and allow a tiny negative or unloving and critical thought in, and before you realise what is happening to you find your vibrations have been lowered, you become depressed and disconsolate and are no good to anyone, not even to yourself. Change your thinking! Start here and now looking on the bright side of life, looking for the very best, counting your blessings, appreciating everything and giving thanks for everything, and you will soon find your whole outlook will change. I need more and more beacons of light in this darkened world, the more light there is, the less darkness. If only more souls would realise this and do something about it and awaken out of their slumbers and rise up taking that glorious light which is within them out into the world and so change the whole landscape by dispersing the darkness, for darkness cannot withstand the light. Do your part now and do it with a heart filled with joy and thanksgiving and be everlastingly grateful that you know what you can do about it and Do It.
Eileen Caddy (Findhorn)
Eileen Caddy (Findhorn)
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
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
WILD GEESE
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver
Step by step the longest march can be won, can be won
Many stones do form an arch; singly none, singly none
And by union what we will can be accomplished still
Drops of water turn a mill; singly none, singly none.
Sweet Honey in the Rock
Many stones do form an arch; singly none, singly none
And by union what we will can be accomplished still
Drops of water turn a mill; singly none, singly none.
Sweet Honey in the Rock
Ultimately, work on self is inseparable from work in the world. Each mirrors the other; each is a vehicle for the other. When we change ourselves, our values and actions change as well. When we do work in the world, internal issues arise that we must face or be rendered ineffective.
Charles Eisenstein | Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition
Charles Eisenstein | Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman
Howard Thurman
We don’t see things are they are, we see them as we are.
Anaïs Nin
Anaïs Nin
Our public spaces are as profound as we allow them to be. They are our shared spaces and reflect what matters to us as a community and as individuals. … At their greatest, our public spaces can nourish our well-being and help us see that we’re not alone as we try to make sense of our lives. They can help us grieve together and celebrate together and console one another and be alone together. Each passerby is another person full of longing, anxiety, fear, and wonder. With more ways to share in public space, the people around us can not only help us make better places, they can help us become our best selves.
Candy Chang
Candy Chang
“One of the ways that your project, your personal healing, or your social invention can change the world is through story. But even if no one ever learns of it, even if it is invisible to every human on Earth, it will have no less of an effect.”
Charles Eisenstein | The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
Charles Eisenstein | The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
We make our world significant by the courage of our questions
and the depth of our answers.
Carl Sagan
and the depth of our answers.
Carl Sagan
The Great Spirit is everywhere. The Great Spirit hears whatever is in our minds
and hearts and it is not necessary to speak to Him in a loud voice.
Black Elk
and hearts and it is not necessary to speak to Him in a loud voice.
Black Elk
There is a threshold over which we step and discover that not everything
about the past still has the power to wound. Benign melancholy, bearable
and casting an ochre-colored light over people and events, carries a warmth
that doesn't deny loss but makes appreciation possible in spite of it.
Marylinn Kelly - Pasadena, Los Angeles, USA
about the past still has the power to wound. Benign melancholy, bearable
and casting an ochre-colored light over people and events, carries a warmth
that doesn't deny loss but makes appreciation possible in spite of it.
Marylinn Kelly - Pasadena, Los Angeles, USA
What is to give light, must endure burning.
Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy
which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
Khalil Gibran
which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
Khalil Gibran
“We are not just a skin-encapsulated ego, a soul encased in flesh.
We are each other and we are the world.”
Charles Eisenstein | The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
We are each other and we are the world.”
Charles Eisenstein | The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
BONE
1.
Understand, I am always trying to figure out
what the soul is,
and where hidden,
and what shape
and so, last week,
when I found on the beach
the ear bone
of a pilot whale that may have died
hundreds of years ago, I thought
maybe I was close
to discovering something
for the ear bone
2.
is the portion that lasts longest
in any of us, man or whale; shaped
like a squat spoon
with a pink scoop where
once, in the lively swimmer's head,
it joined its two sisters
in the house of hearing,
it was only
two inches long
and thought: the soul
might be like this
so hard, so necessary
3.
yet almost nothing.
Beside me
the gray sea
was opening and shutting its wave-doors,
unfolding over and over
its time-ridiculing roar;
I looked but I couldn't see anything
through its dark-knit glare;
yet don't we all know, the golden sand
is there at the bottom,
though our eyes have never seen it,
nor can our hands ever catch it
4.
lest we would sift it down
into fractions, and facts
certainties
and what the soul is, also
I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light.
Mary Oliver (from Why I Wake Early, 2004)
1.
Understand, I am always trying to figure out
what the soul is,
and where hidden,
and what shape
and so, last week,
when I found on the beach
the ear bone
of a pilot whale that may have died
hundreds of years ago, I thought
maybe I was close
to discovering something
for the ear bone
2.
is the portion that lasts longest
in any of us, man or whale; shaped
like a squat spoon
with a pink scoop where
once, in the lively swimmer's head,
it joined its two sisters
in the house of hearing,
it was only
two inches long
and thought: the soul
might be like this
so hard, so necessary
3.
yet almost nothing.
Beside me
the gray sea
was opening and shutting its wave-doors,
unfolding over and over
its time-ridiculing roar;
I looked but I couldn't see anything
through its dark-knit glare;
yet don't we all know, the golden sand
is there at the bottom,
though our eyes have never seen it,
nor can our hands ever catch it
4.
lest we would sift it down
into fractions, and facts
certainties
and what the soul is, also
I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light.
Mary Oliver (from Why I Wake Early, 2004)