I wrote this last year, and it’s even more true today, if that’s possible:
“You know that exercise you do, where you list 12 famous people, dead or alive, that you would invite to dinner? I always loved that, seating Joan of Arc next to Harriet Tubman and Hildegarde of Bingen next to Starhawk. I love to ponder such conversations.
“Still, lately the table I fantasize about setting includes many more than 12, and all of you are living souls whom I know here in this space. Many of you I have never met in person, in this lifetime at least, and some of you I see rarely or never anymore, but I treasure who we have been together, and I am grateful for re-connection here in this place. Oh, how we would laugh and talk and sing and weep and eat until the wee hours if we were to set such a table. We’d need a many-day feast, I think.
“Thank you for being my friends.”
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“One tree is like another tree, but not too much. One tulip is like the next tulip, but not altogether. More or less like people – a general outline, then the stunning individual strokes. Hello Tom, hello Andy. Hello Archibald Violet, and Clarissa Bluebell. Hello Lilian Willow, and Noah, the oak tree I have hugged and kissed every first day of spring for the last thirty years. And in reply its thousand of leaves tremble! What a life is ours! Doesn’t anybody in the world anymore want to get up in the middle of the night and sing?” —Mary Oliver
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“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
—John Keats
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“Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”
—Rumi
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“My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want. We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and say to each other: ‘We must be together; our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing.’” —Mother Jones
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“Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.” —Franklin Roosevelt
Gratitude List:
1. Wise friends
2. Thoughtful teenagers
3. Real, actual compassionate souls
4. Eggs on toast–comfort food
5. Sweater weather
May we walk in Beauty!
Mockingbird Chronicles 