I took the photo this morning just after dawn. The sky was still indigo to the north. To the east, right of the barn a line of tangerine sky was appearing. And the great horned owls were calling from north and south. Sometime when the moon is rising red above the ridge, I want to position his antlers so I can catch the moon in their circle.

If you have followed my images of the stump over the past couple of years, you can see that this year, the surface is cratered. The wood is spongy and fragile, and there have been no new flowerings of mushrooms lately, though the slime molds and other creeping fungi are still having their day. It’s becoming treacherous to walk in the near vicinity of the stump because the roots have begun to rot, leaving troughs which radiate outward.

Gratitude List:
1. My most quiet student became very animated during a class discussion today, and told a story. It is such a satisfying thing for a teacher to hear the most quiet ones speak.
2. Cabbage for supper. Must be those Germanic genes, but cabbage is comfort food.
3. Listening to Brene Brown’s Braving the Wilderness. So much to learn.
4. Hard conversations
5. Community
May we walk in Beauty!

“…believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.” —Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

Valarie Kaur: “What if this is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?”

“They say to dance like nobody is watching. I think that implies that we are afraid or ashamed to dance in front of the people. I say dance like everybody is watching. Dance like your children are watching, your ancestors, your family. Dance for those who are hurting, those who can’t dance, those who lost loved ones and those who suffer injustices throughout the world. Let every step be a prayer for humanity! Most of all dance for the Creator, who breathed into your soul so you may celebrate this gift of life!” —Supaman, hip hop and Powwow dancer

“Destroy the idea that men should respect women because we are their daughters, mothers, and sisters. Reinforce the idea that men should respect women because we are people.” —Radleigh Lauren

“Let the violence and pain in our world root you even more deeply in your commitment to be kinder and love harder, no matter the person or circumstance. Your great ability to love has everything to do with creating a more peaceful reality on our planet. Your love matters. It makes a critical difference. It helps us all.” —Scott Stabile

“What we would like to do is change the world—make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute—the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words—we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.” —Dorothy Day

“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.” —Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

Gayle Boss, comparing the precarious life of the chickadee to the chosen poverty of St. Francis: “Like the saint wed to Lady Poverty, every winter day the equation of their existence is open: Will there be enough of what they need to take them through the dark night, into tomorrow? Beyond reason, like the saint, they act as if the question is truly an opening, a freedom, a joy.”

“There’s an important distinction between the word ‘cure’ and the word ‘heal.’ In contemporary language, cure means to eradicate an illness or wound. But heal comes from the root “to make whole.” While some grief can not and should never be cured, it can be invited and allowed into one’s way of being in the world.” —from “Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home” by Toko-pa Turner

“The opposite of consumption is not frugality, it is generosity.”
—Raj Patel

“By reciting a myth, the storyteller remembers a creation, and, by remembering, is a part of that creating. It is best understood in that dreadful solecism “walkabout”. In walking, the Australians speak the land. Their feet make it new, now, and in its beginning. And the land speaks to them, now, anew, and in their beginning, by step and breath that meet in its dance, so that land and people sing as one.” —Alan Garner, The Voice That Thunders

“This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we’re born into stories. I say we’re also born from stories.” —Ben Okri

“So every day
I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth
of the ideas of God,
one of which was you.” ―Mary Oliver

“A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.” —Nelson Mandela

“Never does Nature say one thing and Wisdom another.” —Juvenal

“There is a place where words are born of silence,
A place where the whispers of the heart arise.” —Rumi (Barks)

“Midway in our life’s journey,
I went astray
from the straight road
and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood.”
—Dante, first tercet of The Inferno