My landscaping plan is generally: Buy or be given a new plant, and plant it wherever. Random is the order of the day. I dig up a few hostas and ferns every spring, and put them along the shop or in other beds to fill things out. A couple years ago, I bought a small bleeding heart at a perennials sale. Last summer, I took some of the now rather extensive bleeding heart and planted it by the shop–both plants came up this spring.
When my brother and sister-in-law stopped in to hug me last Friday, he said, “Oh! Look at your bleeding heart!” Then he gave me one of his classic looks, and said, “I mean the plant, of course.”
Gratitude for All that Opens the Heart:
1. Humor
2. Tender Words
3. Kind deeds
4. Children and teens and young adults
5. You
So Much Love!
“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” —Simone Weil
“You can never leave footprints that last if you are always walking on tiptoe.” —Leymah Gbowee
“God speaks to each of us as [she] makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
“I do not see a delegation of the four-footed.
I see no seat for the eagles.” —Chief Oren Lyons, Onondaga
“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” —Kurt Vonnegut
“I told them we’re tired of the culture wars, tired of Christianity getting entangled with party politics and power. Millennials want to be known by what we’re for, I said, not just what we’re against. We don’t want to choose between science and religion or between our intellectual integrity and our faith. Instead, we long for our churches to be safe places to doubt, to ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. We want to talk about the tough stuff—biblical interpretation, religious pluralism, sexuality, racial reconciliation, and social justice—but without predetermined conclusions or simplistic answers. We want to bring our whole selves through the church doors, without leaving our hearts and minds behind, without wearing a mask.” ―Rachel Held Evans
Go deeper.
Past thoughts into silence.
Past silence into stillness.
Past stillness into the heart.
Let love consume all that is left of you.
—Kabir
Mockingbird Chronicles 