Category Archives: Sweet Breathing

Sweet Breathing

Your Place in the Family

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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

 

 

Sweet Breathing

Your Own Wild Life

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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
Sweet Breathing

It Matters

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Winter Scene, Home, Snow, Sun Through Trees

“it matters what voices you listen to, it matters what books you read, it matters what you buy, what you do with your money if you have it and how you interact with those who don’t have it, it matters who you surround yourself with and why, it matters where you put your life labor, it matters where you put your love labor, it matters where you put your creative labor and what you create and why, it matters what you let into your life and what you are willing to live with, it matters what your relationship to the planet is or isn’t, it matters how you respond to danger at the door…even if it’s at your neighbor’s door.”

~ Lidia Yuknavitch

Raven, Snow, Glacier

 

Sweet Breathing

Unity

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“In union there is strength.”

-Aesop

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”

-Helen Keller

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”

-Martin Luther King Jr.

Love is, as always, prevailing in the ethers that bind us.  Cohesive, firm, immersed in the knowledge that we are all equal. There is no other possible outcome than that of equity for all precious humans and animals on the planet, and for the mother Earth herself.

From sunrise’s sweet pastels over the grandfather mountains to sunset’s golden colors bathing every person, rock, waterway, mountain, winged one, and animal, there is softness, sweetness, and truth.

Love will prevail.  Love is prevailing.

May we all be Love Warriors, vigilant, persistent, focused, and true.

sunset-rondarosa

Sweet Breathing

One of Degree, Not of Kind

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“The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”

-Charles Darwin

big-bear-on-the-hill-looking-back-fall

Bears are not companions of men, but children of God, and His charity is broad enough for both. Yet bears are made of the same dust as we, and breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters. A bear’s days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart-pulsings like ours and was poured from the same fountain…”
– John Muir

big-bear-sept-fall

Sweet Breathing

Understanding the Language of Nature

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Forest Stump, Trail of the Cedars

The language that nature uses, how do we touch it, know it?  It surely exists on a plane that some access readily, but most humans aren’t close enough to understand.

I love this time lapse video showing the loveliness of mushrooms sprouting from the forest floor, their umbrellas unfurling majestically.  It speaks to me, but the language is clearer, louder when I’m the forest itself, listening…. listening.