poem-a-day

Dea Ex Machina

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I think I have given this name to at least one poem before. I am a dog worrying the same bone, over and over again, a rainstorm eroding the same patch of earth until a rut is formed, then a stream, a river, a rift, a gorge. How there is something of the Holy in every atom, every galaxy, every sound and color and thought.

Here is the sixth Rilke riff from the set my friend Tim offered. He actually tucked a seventh into the mix after his initial suggestion, so I may take that up tomorrow and make a full week of it.

Gratitude List:
1. Deep sleep last night, and the help of Melatonin to take me there
2. This cool, cool evening after a day of thermal delight
3. Cycles, seasons, shifts–inner change often seems to happen on the coattails of a seasonal shift
4. The circles of beloveds who surround us, the interlocking nets and webs of support
5. Flaming forsythia
May we walk in Beauty!

“A good plan isn’t one where someone wins, it’s where nobody thinks they’ve lost.” —Terry Pratchett

“We have all hurt someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. We have all loved someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. it is an intrinsic human trait, and a deep responsibility, I think, to be an organ and a blade. But, learning to forgive ourselves and others because we have not chosen wisely is what makes us most human. We make horrible mistakes. It’s how we learn. We breathe love. It’s how we learn. And it is inevitable.” —Nayyira Waheed

“To me, it’s all right if you look at a tree, as the Hindus do, and say the tree has a spirit. It’s a mystery, and mysteries don’t compromise themselves—we’re never gonna know. I think about the spiritual a great deal. I like to think of myself as a praise poet.” —Mary Oliver

“When you hold a child in your arms, or hug your mother, or your husband, or your friend, if you breathe in and out three times, your happiness will be multiplied at least tenfold.” —Thich Nhat Hanh

“I stuck my head out the window this morning, and spring kissed me BANG in the face.” —Langston Hughes

“In the morning, wonder and be generous like the sun.
In the evening, meditate and be kind like the moon.” —Debasish Mridha

“There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself, and the recovery of our own silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven.” —Meister Eckhart

“Every spring is the only spring—a perpetual astonishment.” —Ellis Peters

“Nothing is more terrifying to evil than joy!” —Cannoc, in The Beatryce Prophecy, by Kate DiCamillo

Out of the Box

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This is the fifth day of riffing on phrases from Rilke. I love the choices my friend Tim made, choosing phrases with odd beginnings. I am a little compulsive about following my own rules, and I decided right away for some reason that I would begin every poem with the Rilke line, no matter how awkward. I can already feel it affecting my sentence structure, my sense of the sentence. This one begins with Nor. How do you begin with Nor and create something that makes real sense? It’s forcing my brain to explore different pathways. I’m liking this new view.

Gratitude List:
1. Cats: they’re such good company
2. Daffodils
3. This phrase from a student today: “If this last stanza of the poem were sentient, I would hug it!” (Jimmy Santiago Baca’s “I Am Offering this Poem”)
4. National Poetry Month
5. Praying/Meditating with my body
May we walk in Beauty!

“When I interviewed Maya Angelou, she told me to write this sentence on my notepad and to never forget it:
EVERY STORM RUNS OUT OF RAIN.
I still think of that to this day. ” —Alex Banyan

“Stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive.” —Hafiz

“The problem is that you think you are separate from others.” —Richard Rohr

“You have to want a thing enough to reach out for it.” —Lailah Gifty Akita

“To wait within the moment for the coming dawn,
To breathe the single breath of all that lives,
To walk the web on which we all belong,
To face the newborn day with love instead of fear.
To listen for the whisper of the Spirit’s wind,
To feel Creator’s heartbeat in the world around,
To hear the grace of the Beloved in my neighbor’s voice,
To embrace the sacred space between the past and change.”
—Beth Weaver-Kreider

“Hope is a dimension of the soul. . .an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. . . .It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.” —Vaclav Havel

“When time comes for us to again rejoin the infinite stream of water flowing to and from the great timeless ocean, our little droplet of soulful water will once again flow with the endless stream.” —William E. Marks

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Healing is not pouring your energy into another, but activating the widening field of possibility around yourself, so the other may glimpse their own majesty forming on the horizon.” —Toko-pa Turner

“An ant crosses your carpet. A spider weaves a pattern older than mammals beneath your stairs. Just nod, breathe, and think, “Good. It’s all still here. The forest, the mountains, the desert. At home in my home.” The sterile white box is the stranger. Not the ant. Not the spider.” —Jarod Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

Back To National POETRY MONTH

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments
Last year, when I made this with the help of an AI model, I called it “St. Martha Tames the Dragon.” Today, I am calling it: “St Martha Re-Wilds the Dragon.”

I have been away from the blog for a time. I am practicing living shamelessly, so this is a recognition of the hiatus and not a confession of neglect. I have missed this space. Somehow, the shift in my life has meant I don’t head here as often to voice my thoughts and ideas. I have been settling for the immediacy of conversation and Facebook, both of which are satisfying, but which don’t leave a record in the way that the blog does.

Today was a hard day, remembering how my world began to crumble this day last year, remembering how naive I was to think that someone with more power and say-so would help me to navigate the waters of a focused stalking and attack, to protect me. I’ve been on the edge of panic a couple times today. Small things, like worrying I had made a calendar mistake for the family–an oh-shucks moment became an I’ve-let-everybody-down moment. I’m pretty good at talking my brain out of those panic holes, and I’ve become good at focused breathing to get my body out of the fight/flight/freeze moments. Still, I’ll be glad to get through the visceral memories into calmer space.

On the other hand, today was a really pleasant day: My students bring me joy, the weather was great, I managed to do some excellent planning work for a couple things I am responsible for in the next couple of days, supper was delicious, I picked up my kid at track on time, I wrote a poem I am proud of. When I told a friend how on this day last year I was suddenly outed as a tarot reader in the Christian school where I taught, shamed and interrogated, and eventually forced to resign, she asked me to read a card for her, and afterward sweetly wished me a happy anniversary–turned it upside-down. And, a colleague offered some wonderful professional development tips on how to help scaffold and support anxious students to do the hard things instead of excusing them from doing the hard things–more strategies for my inner work as well.

All this to say, we CAN do hard and scary things. And it’s going to look different for everyone. A beloved of mine sent me a little cartoon yesterday of a person in a fetal position, hugging a pillow. It said, “Sometimes this is what resilience looks like.” I opened up the text right as I woke up from a nap, so it fit.

Great, great gratitude to all my beloveds who walked the hard road with me. You’ve modeled how to be Present to someone in grief and anxiety and rage. We are all, as Ram Dass says, walking each other home.

So it’s day 5 of National Poetry Month. Although I have not yet posted here, I have been writing a poem a day. Emily Dickinson wrote, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” a week or so ago, I read my first batch of CAConrad poems, and I knew exactly what she meant. It was like a total revelation. CAConrad makes poems that are sculptures on the page, and I have begun playing with making my poems more sculptural, not with the physical-representation of a typical concrete poem, but with a sense of abstract structure. Some of these are attempts at poetic sculptures.

Walking into the Labyrinth

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This afternoon, I crawled through cobwebs in the attic to retrieve two full snakeskins and several partial snakeskins that someone had shed at the same place in the eaves. I tried to talk to the AI about a woman with snakes for necklaces, but I wasn’t happy with any of those, so I altered a picture of myself.

I led Sunday School today with a Poetry for Advent theme: Feeling our Way Into the Darkness. One of the various prompts I offered for writing was to write a poem in a labyrinth. I printed out copies of Lisa Gidlow Moriarty’s Dancing Woman Labyrinth. This afternoon, I pulled phrases from my labyrinth poem to make this.

Darkness calls.
My shadow blends
into shifting Shadow,
and I am borne upon wave
upon wave of indigo shade.
I am uncertain
but unafraid
stepping into
the fresh adventure
of unknowing.

Gratitude List:
1. Crows
2. Treasure trove of snake skins I found in the attic
3. Pileated Woodpecker in the treetops
4. The songs and conversation about Mary in church today. In the stories we tell, so often she has no agency, but we get to choose how we tell the story, who we make of her. For someone who daily prays the rosary, this was a particularly meaningful morning.
5. Poetry, and how it opens us to ideas, to each other, to Words.
May we walk ever in Beauty!

“People talk about medium. What is your medium? My medium as a writer has been dirt, clay, sand—what I could touch, hold, stand on, and stand for—Earth. My medium has been Earth. Earth in correspondence with my mind.” —Terry Tempest Williams

“The country is in deep trouble. We’ve forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, and just hoping to land on something. But that’s the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.” —Cornel West (2005)

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.” —Jane Austen

And Then. . .

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Today’s prompt, the last of the month, is to write a poem titled “And ________.” I will probably take a break from daily poeming after today, but I hope not to be so absent from the blog as I sometimes am between the Poem-Months of April and November. This month of poem-a-day has been almost as rich for me as the first one I ever did, which deepened my poetic voice. I am grateful for these challenges.

And then the story ended.

And then the wild one
broke through the walls we’d built
to keep out the harrowing questions
and protect our careful dogmas.
And the wind scoured our spaces
clear of the lies and dissembling,
tearing down the towers we’d erected
of malice and spite and smugness,
breaking down the bridges we’d placed
above the perilous chasms.
None of us escaped its shriving.
And some of us were devastated,
and many of us were relieved.

And then the story began.

Gratitude List:
1. Dogs. Every school should have dogs that come to visit sometimes.
2. Poem-a-Day. I loved the work of this month, and how it expanded my craft as well as pushing me to do more intentional inner work. But I am also tired and ready for a break.
3. Guidance and protection
4. A happy lamp–full spectrum light to get me through the gray days. (I do love rainy days, and even rainy November days, but it is nice to have my alternative sunshine to get me through days of no-sun and early night.)
5. Shiny stones
May we walk in Beauty!

“I don’t always feel like I belong, or like I understand the unwritten rules of certain groups, even though I think I am a pretty good observer of human nature. So when I am in a group whose rules accept everyone’s awkwardness and oddness unconditionally, which loves each one not in spite of our oddities, but because of them, then I feel safe. Then I feel belonging. I am especially grateful to those of you who know how to extend unconditional welcome in ways that make everyone believe they belong.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider

“To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a divine voice. Our primary need for the various life forms of the planet is a psychic, rather than a physical, need.” —Thomas Berry

“All through your life, the most precious experiences seemed to vanish. Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience. This is probably why the soul never surfaces fully. The intimacy and tenderness of its light would blind us. We continue in our days to wander between the shadowing and the brightening, while all the time a more subtle brightness sustains us. If we could but realize the sureness around us, we would be much more courageous in our lives. The frames of anxiety that keep us caged would dissolve. We would live the life we love and in that way, day by day, free our future from the weight of regret.” —John O’Donohue

“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you…. What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.”

I began to ask each time: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, “disappeared” or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.

Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.

And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” —Audre Lorde

Truth AND Dare

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments
Art by AI and EWK: “The Naked Face of Truth”

Today’s prompt is to write a truth and/or dare poem.

What will you dare for truth?
Will you look inside yourself,
past the veils of arrogance
and self-importance,
beyond the doors of certainty,
to claim doubt and humility
as guides and guardians
to lead you safely
over pathways perilous
to the place where she resides?
Can you bear her glowing nakedness,
her fierce regard, her clarity?
Will you dare to seek her unreservedly,
without artifice or guile?

There is no choice–
of truth
or dare–
for the greatest daring
is in the choice you make
to seek the open truth.

Gratitude List:
1. My classroom plants. Today, I added an aloe plant that my nibling Keri was giving away. It’s in a mug shaped like a Viking head, and it makes me smile every time I see it. I am calling it Snorri Sturluson, of course.
2. The incredible emotional intelligence of some of my students. One of their beloved former teachers died last night, and their processing of their loss is tender and beautiful.
3. Even on the perilous pathways, we are not alone.
4. Divergence. It is in divergence that transformation is born.
5. Also, the creativity of students: We have open lockers at our school, and one student has painstakingly created a miniature apartment in the top of hers for her Black Panther character doll. There’s a bed and a bookcase and a refrigerator and a tiny Christmas tree with presents, and pictures on the wall and a couch, and LED lights strung up around the inside of the “room.” Such delight and magic shared with everyone who passes by.
May we walk in Beauty!

“Healing comes in waves and maybe today the wave hits the rocks. And that’s ok, that’s ok, darling. You are still healing, you are still healing.” —Ijeoma Umebinyuo

“No matter where we are, the ground between us will always be sacred ground.“ —Fr. Henri Nouwen

“The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding.” —Gretel Ehrlich

“‪The fact that these words and the jumble of lines that create their letters has no real, inherent meaning outside of a human context, yet they hum with life, is a wonderful reminder that what we imagine can easily become real and powerful simply because we decide it should be so.‬” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

“Writing at the library. Surrounded by thousands of books, windows into other minds. Some of these writers are living. Some are not. Neatly ordered rectangles of concentrated human life and intellect. A book is certainly a kind of ghost and libraries are pleasantly haunted places.” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

“The beauty of the world…has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.” —Virginia Woolf

I know nothing, except what everyone knows —
If there when Grace dances, I should dance.
—W.H. Auden

“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

Remix

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The prompt today is to remix an earlier poem from the month. I don’t think I have quite fulfilled the brief, as they say on the reality contest shows–it might be more of a revision than a remix, but I’ve worked on it so much already, and I need to get on to other things in my day. Sigh. But I do definitely feel better about this poem than I did about the first version. I paid more close attention to sound and progression, and even though it remains free verse, I tightened up the rhythm a bit.

Shrug your shoulders
or tug out your hair,
dig a hole in the cliff,
or rig a ship to sail
away from here:
you’ll never evade the struggle,
for you carry the struggle
within you.

And even if you do hand
the Ferrywoman her due,
or pay the piper for a tune,
or grow the magic beans
or lower your vision,

eventually the only way out,
as they say, is through.

Gratitude List:
1. The way, when a cat stretches, I feel the relaxing of tension in my own spine
2. Many different-colored markers
3. Pecan pie
4. I threw a stone of release into the River today, and I felt the release deep within me
5. The messages in dreams
May we walk in Beauty!

“There are no shortcuts to wholeness. The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we’ve shown ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves and to the world at large, ‘I am all of the above.’” —Parker Palmer

Solace is your job now.”
—Jan Richardson

Joy Harjo:
“When I woke up from a forty-year sleep, it was by a song. I could hear the drums in the village. I felt the sweat of ancestors in each palm. The singers were singing the world into place, even as it continued to fall apart. They were making songs to turn hatred into love.”

“The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.”
―Meridel Le Sueur

“I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.”
―Madeleine L’Engle

“Alas, the webs are torn down, the spinners stomped out. But the forest smiles. Deep in her nooks and crevices she feels the spinners and the harmony of their web. We will dream our way to them …
…Carefully, we feel our way through the folds of darkness. Since our right and left eyes are virtually useless, other senses become our eyes. The roll of a pebble, the breath of dew-cooled pines, a startled flutter in a nearby bush magnify the vast silence of the forest. Wind and stream are the murmering current of time, taking us back to where poetry is sung and danced and lived. … In the distance a fire flickers – not running wild, but contained, like a candle. The spinners.” —Marylou Awiakta, Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother’s Wisdom

“Do it right, because you only got one time to walk this earth. Make it good, make it a good thing.” —Grandmother Agnes “Taowhywee” (Morning Star) Baker Pilgrim (1924-2019)

Re-Solutions

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Today’s prompt was to write about resolutions. This one got a little prosey, but I’m happy with it.

A resolution presupposes
the failure of a first solution.
We re-solve to solve it all again,
but to get it right this time,
with a little hope and grit.

Every year, we come down
off the Christmas high,
vowing to do better,
to try harder,
to get a little closer to the mark.

And the cynicism flies–
What makes you think you’ll
do any better on a second chance?
But we do try. We re-view
the situation, recalibrate,
reassess, and re-solve
there problem, to edge ourselves
a little closer to success.

And often, the re-solution
turns out better than you imagine
the first solution could have been.

Don’t beat yourself up
for making hopeful resolutions.
Re-solve.
Re-solve.
Re-solve.

Gratitude: There is beauty to be found, even in a rainy November day.

“Never laugh at live dragons.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

*****

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” —Aristotle

*****

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.” —Mark Twain

*****

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” —Aristotle

*****

“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.” —Anais Nin

*****

“Changing the big picture takes time.. and the best thing to do is focus on the things that we can make in our lives if we’re doing all that. That becomes the collage of real change.” —Michelle Obama

*****

“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” —Amelia Earhart

*****

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” —Lucille Ball

*****

“Learn how to take criticism seriously but not personally.” —Hillary Clinton

*****

“Like a great starving beast, my body is quivering, fixed on the scent of light.” —Hafiz

*****

“Identity is a story carried in the body.” —Sophia Samatar

On Third Thought. . .

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Today’s prompt is to write a second thoughts poem. Lately, I have been meditating on how my second thoughts actually tend to do me in, cause me to negate the need for healing conversation. I have worked so hard to avoid rushing into conflict with my Leo nature, roaring and biting and scattering the bullies and thwarters of justice, that I have slid into a passivity–especially when I am the one who has been harmed–that just wants to let it go and not make waves. But that’s not the answer either.

I think I need a confrontation,
need to stage an intervention,
offer explanations,
make a fuss, make a mess,
try to force a transformation.

On second thought,
you catch more flies with honey.
You can lead a horse to water,
but can you really make her drink?
Do you think it is essential
to stir the cauldron of community?
Better leave the sediment
to filter slowly to the bottom.

On third thought, however,
if we leave the bad behavior unremarked,
then bad behavior’s normalized,
and the bullies and their backers
and their frightened silent bystanders
are never called into account
for the harm they caused
or were to fearful to prevent.

First thoughts are too fiery,
often too filled up with passion
to bring about a change.
And second thoughts may look like peace,
but only lead us to repression in the end,
sweeping all the clutter
to the back of the closet.
Wait for third thoughts to arrive
and your heart will find the rhythm,
and the pathway to a resolution.
You’ll find that you can take
the fire of the first, mix it with
the modulation of the second,
and create a pathway forward
through the maze.

Gratitude List:
1. Remembering a good soul today
2. The generations who have come before
3. Third Thoughts
4. Naps
5. Wise elders
May we walk in Beauty!

Good advice from my friend Barb: “Find and wear your orange hat honey. There are 750,000 deer hunters in the yard today.”

“We have all hurt someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. We have all loved someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. it is an intrinsic human trait, and a deep responsibility, I think, to be an organ and a blade. But, learning to forgive ourselves and others because we have not chosen wisely is what makes us most human. We make horrible mistakes. It’s how we learn. We breathe love. It’s how we learn. And it is inevitable.”
—Nayyira Waheed

“Only those who attempt the absurd
will achieve the impossible.”
—M. C. Escher

Blessing for the Visitor
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

May you who wander, who sojourn, who travel,
may you who make your way to our door
find rest for your tired feet and weary heart,
food to fill your bellies and to nourish your minds,
and company to bring you cheer and inspiration.
May you find comfort for your sorrows,
belonging to ease your loneliness,
and laughter to bring you alive.

And when your feet find themselves again upon the road,
may they remember the way back to our door.

“A seed sown in the soil makes us one with the Earth. It makes us realize that we are the Earth. That this body of ours is the panchabhuta—the five elements that make the universe and make our bodies. The simple act of sowing a seed, saving a seed, planting a seed, harvesting a crop for a seed is bringing back this memory-this timeless memory of our oneness with the Earth and the creative universe. There’s nothing that gives me deeper joy than the work of protecting the diversity and the freedom of the seed.” —Vandana Shiva

“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” —George McGovern

SRSLY?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Today’s prompt is to write a serious poem.

When everything is a joke,
then nothing is really funny.
When everything is grave and dour,
then nothing is truly momentous.

I need a little honey in my tea
from time to time,
and a little ginger, too,
to give it that extra edge.

Like sweetness and spice,
like bright light and gentle darkness,
we need variety in mood and tone,
and sometimes both together.
Laughter can sometimes be
the most easiest door to open
into a serious transformation.

Gratitude List:
1. Tea
2. A lovely afternoon with my parents
3. Divergence: divergence gives birth to transformation
4. There are only a few short weeks from Thanksgiving Break to Christmas Break
5. Wind chimes
May we walk in Beauty!

“What if our religion was each other? If our practice was our life? What if the temple was the Earth? If forests were our church? If holy water – the rivers, lakes, and oceans? What if meditation was our relationships? If the Teacher was life? If wisdom was knowledge? If love was the center of our being.” ―Ganga White

“Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.

From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” —Rousseau

“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.” —Thomas Merton

“For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.” —Mary Oliver

“It is wonderful when you don’t have the fear, and a lot of the time I don’t. . . . I focus on what needs to be done instead.” —Wangari Maathai