Today’s Poetic Asides prompt is “space.” My friend Linda’s prompt is “silver bullet.”
Faithless by Beth Weaver-Kreider
These days we divine by numbers and watch the spiral uncoil, no longer lazy and languid, but each day adding the sum of an earlier day to the new total— n = (n-1) + (n-3)— like a poisoned Fibonacci sequence with hiccups, unraveling into space.
And the madman on the television is huckstering promises of easy endings and fantastic fortunes, a silver bullet for every ill, anything to raise his ratings,
and meanwhile the lions of jazz are dying of the virus, the poor get poorer and the sick get sicker, and the hospitals are scrambling for supplies.
Rogue churches crowd sanctuaries, passing the virus instead of the peace, putting their faith in a man who has proved himself faithless time again and time again.
No lies, no arrogant bluster, no matter how they will it so, will save us now.
Perhaps this is a new survival of the fittest, where fitness means a willingness to listen to the science, instead of the autocratic mumbling of this fool of a leader whose god may indeed roar to life again come Easter– the Great God Mammon, trailing behind him thousands of dying souls in his wake.
MESSAGES TO SELF: Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in sunshine. Breathe in the fluttering of bird wings in sunlight. Breathe out worry and anxiety and grief. Breathe in the solidity of trees. Breathe in the stalwart courage of oak and locust and sycamore. Breathe out worry and anxiety and grief. (They will still be there for you to examine and explore. For now, let them go.) Breathe in and raise your head. Drop your shoulders. Stand or sit up straighter. Breathe the worry and sadness out the soles of your feet, into Earth. She can hold them for you. Breathe in love and compassion. Breathe out gratitude. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Today at some point, put you bare feet on Earth. Put your fingertips in water. Place your hands oh so tenderly on the bark of a tree. And breathe.
Gratitude List: It feels like these lists are all beginning to repeat, as I sit at the same window every morning to write these lists, and my days look the same. 1. Bird life in the holler. One goldfinch is now fully suited up for summer. Phoebe is speaking its name into the cool morning. The sun turns that red cap on the downy woodpecker to fire. 2. The trees that surround me. 3. The waters that run through the hollow on their way to the River. 4. A lighter day today. The assignments are a little lighter today, and I am going to grade speeches. Enough. Enough. I have done enough. 5. Finding joys and wonders and delights to balance the sadness and anxiety.
Take Care of Yourself. Take Care of Each Other.
“What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.” —Alain de Botton
“We are capable of suffering with our world, and that is the true meaning of compassion. It enables us to recognize our profound interconnectedness with all beings. Don’t ever apologize for crying for the trees burning in the Amazon or over the waters polluted from mines in the Rockies. Don’t apologize for the sorrow, grief, and rage you feel. It is a measure of your humanity and your maturity. It is a measure of your open heart, and as your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal.” —Joanna Macy
“We should have respect for animals because it makes better human beings of us all.” —Jane Goodall
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you love. It will not lead you astray.” —Rumi
“If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there’s shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.” —Harriet Tubman
“The little grassroots people can change this world.” —Wangari Maathai
“Some form of the prayer of quiet is necessary to touch me at the unconscious level, the level where deep and lasting transformation occurs. From my place of prayer, I am able to understand more clearly what is mine to do and have the courage to do it. Unitive consciousness—the awareness that we are all one in Love—lays a solid foundation for social critique and acts of justice.” —Richard Rohr
“You don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to.” —Anonymous
This is the little zen garden in my classroom. It was constantly changing throughout the day as different students would rake and arrange it. I miss those moments.
Since I have been working from home, I have noticed–along with the uncomfortable energies of anxiety and irritability and grieving–a positive energy shift. In normal life, I am often exhausted and worn down. I can’t sleep past 5:30. I get home, and all I want to do is sleep. I try to get to the big grading projects, and it’s like trying to walk through a wall inside my brain. I start to feel like I am a lazy procrastinator. The sense of inadequacy makes me feel more tired and run-down.
In the two and a half weeks since I’ve been working at home, I find that I have to remind myself to stop working. I have to make it a point to take breaks. I feel like I have the energy to work like I need to, to do ALL the grading.
As I have been pondering it, I realize that the energy shift has to do with introversion and extraversion, with being an ambivert–both intro and extra. I think that in many public spaces I present primarily as an extravert, and I love that part of myself. When I am teaching, the interaction with students, whether one-on-one or in a class setting, is one of my great joys. I love pushing myself outward, meeting the other, making connection. But the constant extraversion, and the need to be “on” all the time, takes a toll on my emotional energy. The introvert never gets fed.
Grading, while it’s a solitary sort of task, is (I think) an extension of the extraverted element of the working day. In normal life, I just hit a wall and can’t seem to get past it to push myself out there to do the next thing. My extravert side is exhausted and run-down, and my introvert can’t find the energy to get back into balance.
These days, the grading and the school communicating is pretty much all I have for that crucial connected part of my work-life. My introvert is being fed with lots of quietness and stillness, even in this crowded house. I pace myself. I have re-taught my body to sleep until 6:30. The grading and the school communications give my life purpose and structure. The wall between me and the grading projects is gone. I just sit down and do the next thing. I actually feel (mostly) adequate to these particular tasks.
But I miss my students terribly. I can hardly bear that I might never see some of them again. I know that some of them are hurting and struggling, and I don’t know how to be Present through a computer. When this is over, I will happily go back to physical school. Despite what I am learning about myself and my energy, I don’t think I am meant to be a cyber-school teacher. I need faces and classrooms. While I think that my teaching can be perfectly adequate from home, there’s nothing like the magic of exploring ideas about literature and writing in a real-time class. And there are costs to this kind of work. I NEED to have a life outside of school, and now that school has invaded my home, there is almost nothing that is not school. I must set boundaries, and leave some work unfinished.
I think I will need to hold some of this sense of empowerment and adequacy that I am gaining in my introverted time when I return to extraverted life. Perhaps this current sense of being adequate to the grading tasks will stick to me a little more solidly and I will be able to manage my ambiverted self with a little more balance and grace.
Gratitude List: 1. National Poetry Month! Something to break up the steady monotony of constant school. Today’s prompt is to write a new world poem. 2. Chipping sparrows. They’re so sweet, sort of timid, smaller than the white throats, and they wear those rusty caps. When they come in to the bird feeder, they sometimes hover for a couple seconds before they alight. 3. The sound of a woodpecker rat-a-tatting in the walnut tree. 4. Vanilla in my coffee. I make coffee shakes in the mornings: hot coffee, a little butter a little coconut oil, half-and-half (if I have it), and a scoopful of vanilla protein powder. Blend and drink. 5. How the altered times are teaching me things about myself, things I knew in my head, but didn’t have the space within which to explore the deeper truths.
Take care of each other!
Words for the Day of the Holy Fool: “The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.” —Julian of Norwich
“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” —Carl Jung
“The historical Jesus probably looked like an average Syrian refugee. You know…the ones we turn away.” —Rebecca James Hecking
“Poems are maps to the place where you already are.” —Jane Hirshfield
“Be still, and the world is bound to turn herself inside out to entertain you. Everywhere you look, joyful noise is clanging to drown out quiet desperation. The choice is to draw the blinds and shut it all out, or believe.” —Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson
“When you do not know you need mercy and forgiveness yourself, you invariably become stingy in sharing it with others. So make sure you are always waiting with hands widely cupped under the waterfall of mercy.” —Richard Rohr
“All four gospels insist that when all the other disciples are fleeing, Mary Magdalene does not run. She stands firm. She does not betray or lie about her commitment to Jesus—she witnesses. Hers is clearly a demonstration of either the deepest human love or the highest spiritual understanding of what Jesus was teaching—perhaps both. But why—one wonders–do Holy Week liturgies tell and re-tell the story of Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus, while the steady and unwavering witness of Magdalene is passed over—not even noticed? How would our understanding of the paschal story change if instead of reflecting upon Jesus dying alone and rejected if we were to reinforce the fact that one person stood by him and did not leave? For this story of Mary Magdalene is as firmly stated in scripture as the denial story. How would this change the emotional timbre of the day? How would it affect our feeling of ourselves? How would it reflect upon how we have viewed, and still view, women in the church? About the nature of redemptive love?” —Cynthia Bourgeault, Episcopal Priest
“When I feel this fog rolling in on me, I light fires of affection in the hearts of others. I tell them in tangible ways how the life they live makes me live mine differently, how precious and important they are to the rest of us. That fire then becomes like a beacon which burns through the grey and which I can sail towards.” –Toko-pa Turner
It’s good to leave each day behind, like flowing water, free of sadness. Yesterday is gone and its tale told. Today new seeds are growing. —Rumi
This was in the grocery bags from Flinchbaugh’s, our local farmer’s market, this past weekend.
Gratitude List: 1. Yesterday’s list of gratitude for trees missed my friend Willow, who is putting on her stunning yellow dancing gown for spring. . . 2. . . .and Walnut, whose shadow arms falling across the drive invite me to find the pathways to the sun. 3. The delight of a composer-boy in his birthday gift. He’s working on a long and complicated composition on Noteflite. He’s listening through the piece now, making notes about places where he wants to make changes. 4. Teaching school from my armchair, with a little ginger cat tucked beside me, purring. 5. All that this anxiety is teaching me about living in the moment, about treasuring each joy and delight as I live it.
Take care of each other!
“Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the Universe.” —Galileo
“The way that I understand it, dreaming is nature ‘naturing’ through us. Just as a tree bears fruit or a plant expresses itself in flowers, dreams are fruiting from us. The production of symbols and story is a biological necessity. Without dreams, we could not survive. And though it is possible to get by without remembering our dreams, a life guided and shaped by dreaming is a life that follows the innate knowing of the earth itself. As we learn to follow the instincts of our inner wilderness, respecting its agreements and disagreements, we are also developing our capacity for subtlety. This sensitivity is what makes us more porous and multilingual, bringing us into conversation with the many languages of the world around us.” —Toko-pa Turner
“There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.” ―Guy Gavriel Kay
“Even the simplest of rituals is a way of acknowledging the unseen, the unspoken-about, the holy, which feeds our lives with its inexhaustible generosity. Ritual restores us to one another and to that grander coherence to which we all belong. Devoting your time to a ritual is like tending to a living bridge between the seen and the unseen, keeping that reciprocity alive.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa
“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” —Nelson Mandela
“Beneath the surface, there is a deeper and vastly more authentic Self.” —Cynthia Bourgeault
Yesterday, in her online sermon, my pastor used the Psalm 23 text, and emphasized the sheltering aspects of the psalm. At one point, she was discussing the sheltering canopies of trees, and she intimately described this weeping beech tree who lives on the campus of the Jesuit Center in Wernersville, PA. We cannot travel there now to sit beneath her branches, but here is a photo. I will meditate within her shelter today, through the images I have of her, but I will also physically sit on my porch under the sheltering canopy of my sycamore friend.
Do you have a tree friend? If you can do so without breaking your rules of sheltering in place, why not find a tree today, someone whose bark you can feel beneath your hands, whose branches filter light and air above you, whose presence can hold you steady in these unsteady times.
Below is a paraphrase of Psalm 23 that another of our pastors read during our online service yesterday. I love it.
Psalm 23 Nan Merrill | March 2010 (Vol. XXIII, No. 3)
O my Beloved, you are my shepherd, I shall not want; You bring me to green pastures for rest and lead me beside still waters renewing my spirit, You restore my soul. You lead me in the path of goodness to follow Love’s way.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow and of death, I am not afraid; For You are ever with me; Your rod and Your staff, they guide me, they give me strength and comfort.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of all my fears; you bless me with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the heart of the Beloved forever.
~ from Psalms for Praying
Gratitude List: 1. The weeping beech at Wernersville. How she is present even at a distance. 2. The sycamore who holds our home in the hollow beneath her sheltering arms. 3. That little oak up the hill, who was a tiny sapling mere years ago, and now rises twenty or thirty feet at the top of the bluff. 4. Jacarandas and frangipanis, baobabs and acacias, the trees of my childhood. 5. The trees that you are. Together, we are a massive forest of shelter and presence. Thank you for your steady breathing, your strong presence.
Take care of each other.
“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic. . .the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.” —Charles de Lint
“My invitation to each of you—student, faculty, community member—is to find a story of someone who has made a change, small or large, whether the consequence was their life or their comfort, and I want you to share that story with at least one other person, something that inspires you to step beyond the boundaries of your courage into a new world beyond the measure you ever thought you could make.” —Kevin Ressler, in 2017 memorial for M. J. Sharp
“What you will see is love coming out of the trees, love coming out of the sky, love coming out of the light. You will perceive love from everything around you. This is the state of bliss.” ―Miguel Ruiz
“My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage.” ―Alice Hoffman
“Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.” —Jonathan Safran Foer
Shelter in Place: A nest made of grasses and vines, leaves, and plastic strips.
Gratitude List: 1. Silence 2. This breath 3. And this one 4. This moment 5. You
Take care of each other. Breathe.
“When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself or other people, that she must not rock the boat for any reason, you are not strengthening her prosocial sense; you are damaging it—and the first person she will stop protecting is herself.” —Martha Stout
*****
“I’ve seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write… and you know it’s a funny thing about housecleaning… it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman. A woman must be careful to not allow over-responsibility (or over-respectabilty) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs, and raptures. She simply must put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she “should” be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.” ―Clarissa Pinkola Estés
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” ―Isaac Asimov
“In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds.” ―Henri J.M. Nouwen
*****
My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world. ―Adrienne Rich
“Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that’s why we decide we’re done. It’s getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.” ―Natalie Goldberg
“The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.” ―Rainer Maria Rilke
*****
“That story you writin’ just might save the world. That poem you throwin’ down, could end wars.” ―York Poet and Shining Woman Christine Lincoln
“Be here. Let your wild self fly free.” ―The Crows
We live in a pocket of a hollow between two arms of Mt. Pisgah, the ridge that runs behind Wrightsville and up to the Susquehanna River. The Hollow is aptly names Skunk Hollow, and down the road from us a quarter of a mile is a farm lane by the name of Skunk Hollow Lane. We are in York County, but some of us used to travel down the ridge and over the River into Lancaster County for work and school.
For two weeks, the schoolfolk among us have been sheltering in place, and all of us have been here for the past week, making errands only to buy groceries or to make panicky trips back to the classroom to get things we thought we had forgotten. (Yes, that last was me, and it was only once, and it turns out that the papers I thought I had left in my room were actually slide shows my students had shared with me online.)
Yesterday our two counties were added to Pennsylvania’s list of counties under mandatory Shelter in Place rules. While there’s a direness to stricter restrictions, it also feels comforting, in a way, because we think people should have been voluntarily sheltering in place already, and this makes it mandatory. We’re all safer in the end for this new order.
On the other hand, we have an ideal place to shelter in, so I shouldn’t be too hard on the people who kept going out, who ignored the distance guidelines. Today we shelter in the house and watch the rain, coffee in one hand and a cat or two on the lap. Were it not for the plaguing anxiety about the spread of this virus, this would be my ideal day. I know it is not so for everyone.
What does shelter mean to you?
Gratitude List: 1. Warm cat, 2. and blanket, 3. and recliner, 4. and windows with a view 5. to the rain in the woods.
Take care of each other.
“Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination.” —Jeanette Winterson
“Writing is a very emotional experience for me. Once, when I was writing the film adaptation of Charlotte’s Web, the phone rang and the caller said, ‘You sound all choked up.’ I said, ‘A spider just died.'” —Earl Hamner
“But the wood is tired, and the wood is old And we’ll make it fine, if the weather holds But if the weather holds, we’ll have missed the point That’s where I need to go” —Indigo Girls
Thich Nhat Hanh: “Real change will only happen when we fall in love with our planet. Only love can show us how to live in harmony with nature and with each other and save us from the devastating effects of environmental destruction and climate change.”
“In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.” —Rachel Carson
“The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.” —CS Lewis
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” —Jack Kerouac
“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.” —John Lennon
“Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.” —Adrienne Rich
I get to choose from three possible thumbnails. What it they’re ALL goofy?
Mary Oliver quotes the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke in her poem “Invitation.”
“You must change your life,” says Rilke.
And here is our invitation, in the middle of this muddle of Exile and Isolation and Distancing: Change Your Life. To a very large degree, it has been wrenched out of our own hands. My life has changed, whether I wanted it to or not. Out of my control.
So how can I take up this invitation, and take the pen in my own hands, the yarn, the paintbrush? How can I pick up the reins of my story and change my own life in this time?
In the two weeks since I have been home, I keep saying, every day, that I am going to get control of this wild horse of school work that will take up every inch of space in my day if I let it. And it’s been a comfort to know that I have something to do that is contributing, in some way, to the continuing work of the world in a time of shut-down. Still, I need to make my balance.
This is the first way that I will change my life. I will figure this out–that spaces between Work and Not-work.
How will you accept Rilke’s invitation?
Gratitude List: 1. Mary Oliver and Rainer Maria Rilke and the invitation to change my life. 2. Fridays are catch-up days. In school, there are Study Halls, and classes are sometimes work periods. There are spaces in the days for catch-up. Somehow, at home, it all runs together, and students and teachers can get a little breathless. Many students are being called in to work extra hours at their essential jobs, and these jobs are helping to support families in a time of uncertainty. Others are struggling with the fear and anxiety and overwhelm of the new normal. So Fridays, while still school days, are days to take a little breath, to have meetings with non-class groups, to regroup in preparation for the coming week. Breathe in. Breathe out. 3. The phoebe perched on the birdfeeder station for a moment, then flitted off. 4. I’m going to bake rolls today. Grateful for yeast and flour and work that teaches me patience. 5. Wild purple hyacinths. We always called them bluebells, and that’s how I think of them.
Take care of each other!
“We get over things. It is the most amazing faculty that we possess. War or pestilence; drought or famine; fire or flood; it does not matter. However devastating the catastrophe, however frightful the slaughter, however total the eclipse, we surmount our sorrows and find ourselves still smiling when the storm is overpast. . . . Nature heals her wounds with loveliness. She gets over things.” —Frank W. Boreham
“I believe a huge part of our collective feeling of emptiness comes from living in this self-centred phase of our evolution as a species, where everything begins with I. I want this object, I want to succeed. I want to improve myself. Even: I want to belong.
But true happiness depends upon our reciprocity with the environment in which we are embedded, and unto which we are indebted. In the same way that mitochondria work to break down nutrients and turn it into energy for our bodies, we too are but a single component of a greater biosphere that sees no hierarchy between ferns and redwoods, worms and eagles.
If we imagine an invisible mycelial network under the visible surface of things, of which we are but fruiting bodies, then we see how our lives should be in service to feeding the whole forest together. Our negligence of that reciprocity is, more than any other factor, what fosters unbelonging.” —Toko-pa Turner
“We are here to awaken from the illusion of separateness.” —Thich Nhat Hanh
“We must learn to respond not to this or that syllable, but to the whole song.” —Thomas Merton
“For still there are so many things That I have never seen In every wood in every spring There is a different green” —J.R.R.Tolkien
“We’re all just walking each other home.” —Ram Das
“I am an instrument in the shape of a woman trying to translate pulsations into images for the relief of the body and the reconstruction of the mind.” —Adrienne Rich
Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems. —Rainer Maria Rilke
When this is all over, I wonder how it will have affected my teaching? I try to create a student-centered classroom, and I think my normal (non-Exile) classroom is very student-focused, but I still found myself spending a lot of time as the sage on the stage. But now, in the past week and a half, I have probably erred on the side of not enough teaching, and more on project-style instruction. I am working toward finding a balance. I hope that as I travel this new pedagogical pathway I can integrate old and new aspects of my teaching self. Maybe, hopefully, I will come out of this a better teacher.
How are you faring in your new rhythms? Are you able to consider that the new ways of doing things in this time-out-of-time might actually improve your understanding of yourself? It’s okay if you feel like you are in a holding pattern, or like you’re losing ground. Or if you’re back and forth (truth be told, that’s a more accurate picture of my status–it’s just that morning brings a clarity that is not always completely present for me all day).
My heart is with you, who must still go out daily to do essential jobs for the good of the community. May your immune system be as strong as your good heart.
My heart is with you, who have been laid off, or who will be laid off. May you find a settled place within, to face the uncertainty of these days. May help come soon.
My heart is with you, who live alone in Exile. May you find alternate ways to do community, from a safe distance.
My heart is with you, who suddenly have two or more overwhelming jobs: working from home or out in the community, and still supervising your children’s schooling, or caring for the emotional needs of family members and beloveds. May you find rest and may you settle into the new rhythms with grace. You are doing enough. You are enough.
Gratitude List: 1. The birthday bush (I thought tree, but I have been corrected by the soon-to-be-birthday-boy) survived the night. Before we went to bed, I repeatedly reminded the cats that it was their responsibility to protect the tree from goblins in the night. They’re less likely to destroy something (like sleep or a birthday bush) if they have been charged with its protection. 2. I realized yesterday that I will likely be home this year when Oriole returns. My heart rises in anticipation. To sit on the porch all day and listen to him calling in his beloved is one of my great joys. 3. Yesterday, I managed to keep up with the minute-by-minute work as well as catch up significantly on pre-Friday-the-13th work. I am feeling more on top of things, school-wise, than I have felt since the beginning of the semester. Now if only I can try to end my school day at 5 today, then I will be golden. 4. The way humans rise to a crisis. And I know not all humans are rising. But the regular people, often those with the most to lose, have been settling in and creating community, reaching out, looking after each other. I really do love humans. 5. The bird feeders. If I go back to teaching in my physical school building this spring, I am going to have to figure out how to set up some bird feeders on the roof outside my windows. It brings me such great joy to watch the birds.
Take care of each other!
This morning my grandmother is teaching me that the easiest (and most elegant) way to defeat an army of hatred, is to sing it beautiful songs until it falls to its knees and surrenders.
It will do this, she says, because it has finally found a sweeter fire than revenge. It has found heaven. It has found HOZHO. —Lyla Johnston
“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days… Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me…So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling…” —Aldous Huxley
“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.” —Anaïs Nin
“What a miracle to be awake inside your breathing!” —Hildegard of Bingen
Definition of Weald: wild, forested lands, uncultivated regions
“Religion is at its best when it makes us ask hard questions of ourselves. It is at its worst when it deludes us into thinking we have all the answers for everybody else.” —Archibald Macleish
“This poem is not housebroken.” —Anne Haines
*I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be.” —Joan Didion
“Give yourself time to make a prayer that will become the prayer of your soul. Listen to the voices of longing in your soul. Listen to your hungers. Give attention to the unexpected that lives around the rim of your life. Listen to your memory and to the inrush of your future, to the voices of those near you and those you have lost. Out of all of that attention to your soul, make a prayer that is big enough for your wild soul, yet tender enough for your shy and awkward vulnerability; that has enough healing to gain the ointment of divine forgiveness for your wounds; enough truth and vigour to challenge your blindness and complacency; enough graciousness and vision to mirror your immortal beauty. Write a prayer that is worthy of the destiny to which you have been called.” —John O’Donohue
If you have never read Toko-pa Turner’s work, begin by buying her book Belonging. It will be a comforting and enlightening companion for your Exile.
Mockingbird Chronicles 