“At the darkest moment comes the light.”
-Joseph Campbell
“I danced with my shadows until they became part of my light.”-Jodi Livon
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. “
Ernest Hemingway
Category Archives: Home
Nature Remains
“the bracing and buoyant equilibrium of concrete outdoor Nature, the only permanent reliance for sanity of book or human life.”
-Walt Whitman
“The trick is, I find, to tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the skies… After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.”
-Walt Whitman
Being Present to My Life (Questioning My Answers)
“I’m busy;but not in the waymost people accept.I’m busy calming my fearand finding my courage.I’m busy listening to my kids.I’m busy getting in touchwith what is real.I’m busy growing things andconnecting with the natural world.I’m busy questioning my answers.I’m busy being present in my life.”— Brooke Hampton
The Wildest & Wisest
“Ten times a day something happens to me like this –
some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell.
This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know:
that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”
-Mary Oliver
As If On a Mist
there are placesplaces on earththat are magical.that no words canhope to describe.where your soulempty and drainedis restored.where the whispers of angelsshimmer through the treesas if on a mist.perfectly and peacefully.and gently floatingon the warm spring breeze.drifting weaving.falling on my facefilling me with grace.-Michael Traveler, from “Places”
A Great Companion
“Stillness is vital to the world of the soul. If as you age you become more still, you will discover that stillness can be a great companion. The fragments of your life will have time to unify, and the places where your soul-shelter is wounded or broken will have time to knit and heal. You will be able to return to yourself. In this stillness, you will engage your soul. Many people miss out on themselves completely as they journey through life. They know others, they know places, they know skills, they know their work, but tragically, they do not know themselves at all. Aging can be a lovely time of ripening when you actually meet yourself, indeed maybe for the first time. There are beautiful lines from T. S. Eliot that say:
‘And the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.”
-John O’Donohue
Excerpt from the book, Anam Cara
Not Outside of You
“You carry Mother Earth within you, She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. In that kind of relationship you have enough love, strength and awakening in order to change your life.”
–Thich Nhat Hanh
The Lens of Attention
“The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees—to learn something by being nothing a little while but the rich lens of attention.”—Mary Oliver, excerpt from Entering the Kingdom
The Altar of Dawn
“I place on the altar of dawn:The quiet loyalty of breath,The tent of thought where I shelter,Waves of desire I am shore toAnd all beauty drawn to the eye.May my mind come alive todayTo the invisible geographyThat invites me to new frontiers,To break the dead shell of yesterdays,To risk being disturbed and changed.May I have the courage todayTo live the life that I would love,To postpone my dream no longerBut do at last what I came here forAnd waste my heart on fear no more.”-John O’Donohue
My Day of Enlightenment
I am sitting with the rain, feeling its love, loving it in turn. I am finding beauty again.
The bed sheets are washing. Life. The gift prevails.
Sheets of rain now cleansing the tall trees. Cathartic. It is always Mother Earth.
This is a special day, as they all are of course, but today’s moments are more present to me. I feel it all out there waiting. With the ancestors. With Mom and Dad.
I’m torn equally between watching a Hallmark movie and studying physics. The secrets of the universe calling me urgently. Or Craig’s laughter. Or being absorbed by the rain.
Each drop a revelation.
I make the bed with the clean sheets. Aware. Aware. They smell clean and fresh. Soft softness in the smell, in the light outside, in my heart. And still the revelations of the universe come in each raindrop.
I take a long shower craving the freshness on my skin, the exhilaration of the water like raindrops. It’s well water after all, held deeply underground from the rain, now pouring over me.
The water dries easily off my skin, but holds fast on the glass shower enclosure. Note to self. Be like skin and not glass, absorbent and easily dried, not reflective and hard like glass, never allowing the rain, the water, in.
I put on my softest Buddha clothes, Buddha pants. The Buddha, now there’s someone who can shed light into the mysteries of this rain soaked day.
But I don’t need his enlightenment. Only my own.
I google to see if Arianna Grande is married (she is), read Bewilderment (Richard Powers – brilliant!), and a bit of Louise Erdlich’s, Future Home of the Living God (how did I miss this in 2017?), then Andrew Doerr’s, Cloud Cookoo Land (so creatively crafted) – it’s truly strange how these random books I’ve selected for no apparent reason have threads that make sense to read them all at the same time – and Adam and Eve (Sena Jeter Naslund). I print out a beautiful piece of art I found on Facebook of a woman embedded in nature with her animal self tangible and put it in a frame by my desk upstairs in the loft.
Then, I opt for the Hallmark movie, in my Buddha pants, and Craig’s laughter, fresh sheets waiting.
Feeling my own enlightenment.
