Last Year’s Words

For last year’s words

belong to last year’s language

and next year’s words

await another voice.”

-T. S. Elliot

 

Here’s to celebrating and reflecting on all of the words, events, moments, hours, learning, growth and love of 2016,

and

to our deepened, more attuned, and newly aware voice of 2017!

 

 

 

Radiance, Love, Light

and True Being

in 2017 ya’ll!!!!

Sweet Solstice

Ahhh… Winter.

Now the sweet season of introspection, quiet, peaceful snowscapes, good books, long nights, welcoming fires, warm hearths, cozy afternoons, wanderings, deepening, dreaming, awakening…

We celebrate this longest night with a glad heart, knowing that with each subsequent day, the sun will grace us with ever more moments of light.  Each day more light.

May our lives, our very souls know this too;  each day more light!

O Winter ruler of the inverted year… I crown thee king of intimate delights, fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, and all the comforts that the lowly roof of undisturbed retirement, and the hours of long uninterrupted evening, know.”

-William Cowper

 

“Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.”

– Pietro Aretino

“Winter is not a season, it’s a celebration.”

– Anamika Mishra

 

Your Place in the Family

Wild Geese, Mary Oliver

“You do 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 reads “Wild Geese”

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-mozilla-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=mozilla&p=you+tube+wild+geese+mary+oliver#id=3&vid=afb25b9ce445c4e85ca9f8849cdd980a&action=click

 

 

Your Own Wild Life

This Thing In You

will not take no for an answer.
This that somehow
shines strong
beneath the heavy hard hurry
of your conveniently
noisy life. This shapeless

something that shows up
everywhere –
even when you forget
to notice.

It does not
understand safe
or sensible, will not let you
get away with half
hearted, lifeless
lies.

It’s that wordless
something
that does not know how
to be quiet. It will continue knocking
until you throw open
the door. Until you become –

Ablaze. Awake. Madly in love.

The dazzling artist
of your own
wild life.

-Julia Fehrenbacher

February 27