“Help one another. It is the only way to survive.” –Elie Wiesel
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“Therefore, dark past,
I’m about to do it.
I’m about to forgive you
for everything.”
–Mary Oliver
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“I believe that without some inner experience of powerlessness, and the wisdom that potentially comes with it, most individuals will misunderstand and abuse power.” ~~Richard Rohr
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“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” –Anais Nin
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“Let us not become the evil that we deplore.” Rep. Barbara Lee, 9/14/01
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Book of Hours II, 16
by Rainer Maria Rilke
How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing –
each stone, blossom, child –
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.
This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
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From Terry Tempest Williams:
“We are creatures of paradox, women and bears, two animals that are enormously unpredictable, hence our mystery. Perhaps the fear of bears and the fear of women lies in our refusal to be tamed, the impulses we arouse and the forces we represent….As women connected to the earth, we are nurturing and we are fierce, we are wicked and we are sublime. The full range is ours. We hold the moon in our bellies and fire in our hearts. We bleed. We give milk. We are the mothers of first words. These words grow. They are our children. They are our stories and our poems.”
Gratitude List:
1. Riding bike on the rail trail. Flat smooth road, cool breeze, woods and stones and water.
2. Weaving, weaving our lives together by sharing our stories
3. Comfortable days in July. Yesterday was my perfect weather
4. The wisdom of Representative Barbara Lee. For seventeen years, she has continued to remind us that the president should not have the power to decide on his/her own to make war. Finally, she has been heard.
5. Hummingbirds, by which I mean magic
May we walk in Beauty!
Mockingbird Chronicles 