“However much you knock at nature’s door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words.”
-Ivan Turgenev
One Wild and Precious Life
“We were not meant to live shallow lives, pocked by meaningless routines and the secondary satisfactions of happy hour. We are the inheritors of an amazing lineage, rippling with memories of life lived intimately with bison and gazelle, raven and the night sky.We are designed to encounter this life with amazement and wonder, not resignation and endurance. This is at the very heart of our grief and sorrow.The dream of full-throated living, woven into our very being, has often been forgotten and neglected, replaced by a societal fiction of productivity and material gain. No wonder we seek distractions.Every sorrow we carry extends from the absence of what we require to stay engaged in this “one wild and precious life”.-Francis Weller
Like a River
“I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”
-John O’Donohue
Magic Exists
Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live.”
-Nora Roberts
Look Again
“If everything around you seems dark,
Look again,
You may be the light.”-Rumi
Observe, Learn, Grow & Love
“We are all visitors
to this time,
this place.
We are just passing through.Our purpose here is to observe,
to learn, to grow
to love….and then,
we return home.”— Aboriginal proverb
Gardening Grace
“Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.”
-May Sarton
Solstice
This summer solstice has been an embrace, an opening, a huge release and a tremendous expansion – inner and outer. What a gift!
Mother Earth in her wisdom, in her sustaining and nurturing power and love, is as ever, guiding, comforting, and expressing beauty in myriad ways.
The wild roses at home are radiating wonder holding rain drops as precious gifts.
It is all a gift to me.
Happy Summer Solstice!
“I too have known loneliness.
I too have known what it is to feel
misunderstood,
rejected, and suddenly
not at all beautiful.
Oh, mother earth,
your comfort is great, your arms never withhold.
It has saved my life to know this.
Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning….”-Mary Oliver
Simple Religion
“This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Nature, Your own mind, Your own heart is the Temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness.”
-Dalai Lama XIV
What Feels Real and True
From Mark Nepo’s The One Life We’re Given the quote below helped with perspective today. Mark Nepo creates word tapestries that weave together to provide such solace, and he has provided tremendous peace to me these last weeks.
I am deeply listening and learning, reading and absorbing the foundational and fundamental changes needed in our country, our culture, our society and our world now. Now. From justice for marginalized people of every pigment shade, every circumstance, to respect and care for our nourishing and sustaining Mother Earth, to acknowledgement for the gifts of the wild ones, the plants and the trees that share our planet, much compassion, understanding, support and change are needed. Thank you Mark for helping me to traverse and navigate these tumultuous times.
“During times of deep change, we’re forced to kneel before the silent god of patience; listening—not for direction, but for what feels real and true. Until presence leads to presence. This is how we come to listen to our soul.
I know from my own evolution that most of what the heart knows enters us like lightning, and is already true somewhere inside, while the rest of us struggles to catch up. I’ve also learned that we’re never drawn into a change we’re not ready for, though the change may be difficult.
Under the weight of living, I’m thankful for how gifted we are to have hearts that feel. Thankful for the chance to be tender and thorough and possible one more time. And whenever we dare or are forced to lift each other up or ease each other down, we have the glorious chance to find what we’ve lost in our common story. When we can truly behold each other, we slowly become each other. We become love itself. It’s through love’s eyes that we can see that it’s sweetly enough to have come this far.
So however uncertain tomorrow might seem, I encourage you to withstand the dizziness of freedom and to trust the wisdom that waits in your heart, which knows what it needs to be alive and to stay alive.
No matter what seems unbearable, the well of feeling in the center of our being will never let us down, just as the fire in the center of the Earth will never go out. As you leave our long conversation and walk back into the sweep of your flowering life, I can only assure you that nothing will keep you from being worn to your beauty, that all will be real, and that everything you touch will gift you something.”
-Mark Nepo
