Tag Archives: quotes

The Door

“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious.

If you have a deep scar, that is a door.

If you have an old, old story, that is a door.

If you love the sky and the water so much

you almost cannot bear it,

that is a door.

If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”

-Clarissa Pinkola Estés

This Is What You Shall Do

Oh Walt Whitman!!

Timeless words that inspire me daily….

“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

-Walt Whitman

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

 

Silence

“Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, “This… this…”; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos.”

-Paul Goodman

So many silences, a profound collection.  To these eloquent words of Goodman’s I would add,  the silence of being one with nature, and in awe of the beauty and connections …

Red Fox