…Every child should have the memory
Of at least one long-after-bedtime walk.
– Robert Frost, from The Fear, 1914 (quite the spooky little poem, if you are so inclined…)
22 Wednesday Jul 2015
…Every child should have the memory
Of at least one long-after-bedtime walk.
– Robert Frost, from The Fear, 1914 (quite the spooky little poem, if you are so inclined…)
22 Wednesday Jul 2015
Posted Life Lessons, Pilgrimage, Seeker, Wanderlust
inTags
Spiritual seekers have always walked. There are pilgrimages to Canterbury, to Mecca, to Jerusalem. There are pilgrimages around Kailas, the sacred Tibetan mountain. Aborigines go on Walkabout. Native Americans set out on Vision Quests. There is something in walking that tunes us to a higher key. Each footfall moves us up a step. We do not come home the same as we set out.
17 Friday Jul 2015
Tags
Freedom to think- which means nothing unless it means freedom to think differently- can be society’s most precious gift to itself. The first duty of a school is to defend and cherish it.
– Arthur Bestor, quoted in The Teacher and the Taught, 1963
17 Friday Jul 2015
Posted Life Lessons
inTags
Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is a loop- an obsessive, debilitating, closed system that causes you to get stuck…Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough- that we should try again. No, we should not.
– Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
13 Monday Jul 2015
Posted Life Lessons, Politics and Patriotism
inTags
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.
– Lillian Hellman
13 Monday Jul 2015
Posted Life Lessons, Politics and Patriotism, Seeker
inThere is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
– William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
12 Sunday Jul 2015
Posted Life Lessons, Poetry, Seeker
inTags
I don’t want to be demure or respectable.
I was that way, asleep, for years.
That way, you forget too many important things.
How the little stones, even if you can’t hear them, are singing.
How the river can’t wait to get to the ocean and the sky, it’s been there before.
What traveling is that!
It is a joy to imagine such distances.
I could skip sleep for the next hundred years.
There is a fire in the lashes of my eyes.
It doesn’t matter where I am, it could be a small room.
The glimmer of gold Böhme saw on the kitchen pot was missed by everyone else in the house.
Maybe the fire in my lashes is a reflection of that.
Why do I have so many thoughts, they are driving me crazy.
Why am I always going anywhere, instead of somewhere?
Listen to me or not, it hardly matters.
I’m not trying to be wise, that would be foolish.
I’m just chattering.
– Mary Oliver, I Don’t Want To Be Demure or Respectable
12 Sunday Jul 2015
Posted Happiness, Humor, Life Lessons, Seeker
inTags
Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.
– Molly Ivins
10 Friday Jul 2015
Posted Poetry, Seeker, Wanderlust
inTags
Who has known heights and depths shall not again
Know Peace– not as the calm heart knows
Low, ivied walls; a garden close;
And though he tread the humble ways of men
He shall not speak the common tongue again.
Who has known heights shall bear forevermore
An incommunicable thing
That hurts his heart, as if a wing
Beat at the portal, challenging;
And yet,– lured by the gleam his vision wore–
Who once has trodden stars seeks peace no more.
– Mary Brent Whiteside, Who Has Known Heights
10 Friday Jul 2015
Tags
The rituals of nourishment cry out for the communion cups, the special plates on which to break bread, the candle flame, the circle drawn in the dirt. Ritual protects and heals, ritual symbolizes to all who come to your table seeking rest and renewal that they are enclosed within a sacred space. You may think you’re only laying a place at the supper table, but when you trust and follow your creative impulses to bring forth something beautiful, you experience the Sacred in the ordinary.
– Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance, 1995