“When you truly love any acre, any being, any waterway, you love them all and realize you’re intimately connected. You can’t change everything, but you can love it all.”
-Kitty O’Meara (from 4/26/21 blog post “Ordinary Things of Conspicuous Value” – The Daily Round
“Maybe you are searching among the branches for what only appears in the roots.”
-Rumi
“…The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”
-J.R.R. Tolkien
“I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.”
-Virginia Woolf
“A woman may crave to be near water, or be belly down, her face in the earth, smelling the wild smell. She might have to drive into the wind. She may have to plant something, pull things out of the ground or put them into the ground. She may have to knead and bake, rapt in dough up to her elbows. She may have to trek into the hills, leaping from rock to rock trying out her voice against the mountain. She may need hours of starry nights where the stars are like face powder spilt on a black marble floor. She may feel she will die if she doesn’t dance naked in a thunderstorm, sit in perfect silence, return home ink-stained, paint-stained, tear-stained, moon-stained.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Spring has dawned, infusing us all with new beginnings…
FOR A NEW BEGINNING (by John O’Donohue)“In out-of-the-way places of the heart,Where your thoughts never think to wander,This beginning has been quietly forming,Waiting until you were ready to emerge.For a long time it has watched your desire,Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,Noticing how you willed yourself on,Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.It watched you play with the seduction of safetyAnd the gray promises that sameness whispered,Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,Wondered would you always live like this.Then the delight, when your courage kindled,And out you stepped onto new ground,Your eyes young again with energy and dream,A path of plenitude opening before you.Though your destination is not yet clearYou can trust the promise of this opening;Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginningThat is at one with your life’s desire.Awaken your spirit to adventure;Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,For your soul senses the world that awaits you.”-John O’DonohueFrom ‘To Bless the Space Between Us’
“we walkhand in handthe wind whippingaround us likea kind of magicshimmering off the branchesthe trees laced with snow,tiny dancers spring from the groundlike dust, tossedhere and there onthe wind …spinningtwirlingswayingto a song that onlythey can hearoh but how romanticdid they appearAnd yeshow it moved me …To each side of us,shimmering towers of whiterose reaching for the skyas if grasping for the hemof heaven itselfAnd herein this mystic place,time seemed to slowand the cold couldnot touch our soulnor pierce our heartsOur hearts, which walkedbetween the towers of iceand beat as one, unscathedby icy spells or bewitchedby the beauty of this enchantingforest, drifted away on a sea ofmesmerizing romantic possibilitiesin our very own winter wonderland”
-Michael Traveler, “Winter Wonderland”
“When you live guided by intuitionrather than thought,your life dances like writing on water,fresh and untraceable.”-Mooji
“I hope for youthe fires of transformationthat burns away the dross of egoleaving oneness, grace, and light.
That you may breathe the winds of beingWith wings of an eagle to soarSowing life into each otheropening hearts and doors
For you are a spring of heavenA breeze in the desert of lifeGiving hope to the hopeless and brokenBringing grace, and peace, and light.”-Bob Holmes, “Ode to a Mystic”
“dawn peeks her headover the horizon softly sweetlylike a child playing peek-a-booher smile shimmers warmlyall across the land, cascadingthrough the branches of treesacross the lakes and streamsglittering like jewels on the petalsof flowers as dew drops clingto the coming of yet another chanceto embrace one another, loveone another, be kind to yetanother person who longsfor a smile, a hug, a willing ear,someone dearyes, dawn is smiling on usfrom up above, loving uswith kindness and warmthgiving us this day towork and playoh what a beautiful wayto greet the new day“
-Michael Traveler from “morning song”
“When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of mountains or fields, or listen to the simple, steadying rhythm of waves. The slowness and stillness gradually takes us over. Our breathing deepens and our hearts calm and our hungers relent. When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation to new growth.This invitation to friendship with nature does of course entail a willingness to be alone out there. Yet this aloneness is anything but lonely. Solitude gradually clarifies the heart until a true tranquility is reached. The irony is that at the heart of that aloneness you feel intimately connected with the world. Indeed, the beauty of nature is often the wisest balm for it gently relieves and releases the caged mind.”-John O’Donohue(from Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)
“I want to stand by the river in my finest dress. I want to sing, strong and hard, and stomp my feet with a hundred others so that the waters hum with our happiness. I want to dance for the renewal of the world.”— Robin Wall Kimmerer
