Brewer’s prompt for today is to write a The _________ of __________ poem. I’ve been working on some more ideas about dragoning after conversation with a friend about the women in stories (particularly family histories) who couldn’t seem to stay within the bounds set for them by the patriarchy, who lived in the shadows labeled heresy and insanity and breakdown, who challenged the stable status quo with questions and demands to know why things were the way they were. In my own story too, I have had to cross the hedge in order to maintain my own inner truth and balance.
Gratitude List: 1. The blooming trees! 2. How the trees are leafing out. Let’s leaf out, too. Let’s turn green. 3. The incredible community of people who donate to make sure that my school is available to as many students with learning differences as possible. 4. The dragon women who didn’t settle for the simple answers. 5. Sunday afternoon naps. May we walk in Beauty!
The Soul, it sees by synesthesia Tasting light caressed by song A touch is like a descant fire resonant and strong. —Craig Sottolano
“I’m not as cooperative as you might want a woman to be.” —Carrie Fisher
“Who does Not Know the Truth, is simply a Fool… Yet who Knows the Truth and Calls it a Lie, is a Criminal.” —Bertolt Brecht
“The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.” —Adrienne Rich
And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. —Raymond Carver’s Late Fragment, inscribed on his tombstone
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good in you at last. All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves. Everything is waiting for you. —David Whyte
“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” ―Mother Teresa
“Walking. I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.” ―Linda Hogan
“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” ―Leonard Bernstein
My sister-in-law is a wise woman. She gave this gentle advice last week for how to respond to anxiety. Look to your left and describe what you see there. Look to your right and do the same. Look in front of you and describe that. Then, look behind you, where the shadows and the unknowns are, and describe that–the physical space here and now. It makes the other unknowns, the ones that freeze and weigh on me, seem less unknown, less likely to pounce.
Every morning before I begin my round of prayers, I cast a circle. I speak of beauty at all the directions, then beauty above me and beauty below me, beauty within and beauty without, and now, I very consciously look to the beauty to the left and the right of me, to the beauty before me, and finally, with gratitude, to the beauty behind me, taking care to notice the safe beauty of my physical surroundings. Then I call upon the Earth which is Her body, the Air which is Her breath, the Fire of Her bright spirit, and the Waters of Her living womb.
Last year at this time, I felt so vulnerable, so unprotected, so endangered, even while I felt such a surge of love and support from my students and their families, from my own family and friends and church community. Now, I create protected space in that circle every morning. One of my prayers is: “Draw me into the dance, into the circle of your radiant loving arms, and protect and preserve me from those who would wish or seek or will or do me harm.” I am befriending the shadows of my anxiety, and also making boundaries to protect myself.
One of my favorite viral internet photos is of a grinning caiman with butterflies all over its head. I read that the reason the butterflies hang out on the caiman is to drink their salty tears. This morning I read of the discovery of the habits of the Gorgone macarea moth of Brazil, which sips the tears of sleeping birds at night.
Today’s prompt (Robert Lee Brewer at Writers Digest) is to write a shadow poem. Today I went a little more concrete in the sculpture of the poem. It’s not quite a moth, but not quite not.
Gratitude List: 1. The sounds of sheep and goats baaing in the field across the holler 2. Thermal delight and the breezes of springtime 3. What the shadows have to teach me 4. Good physical work and still energy to keep going in the day 5. The grass is full of violets and the holler is filled with the singing of birds May we walk ever in Beauty!
“Let me tell you what I do know though… I know mountains grow because of their fault lines. I know lakes turn that gorgeous shade of turquoise because of their silt. I know jewels are formed under pressure. I know trees can grow through rocks, and rivers can break canyons.
I know there are 120 crayola crayons to choose from, so you can color yourself any which way you like.
I know the earth smells fabulous after a hard rain, and I know she breathes. I know out of the destruction of forest fires, new and stronger ecosystems can emerge. I know there is life in the deepest depths of the ocean and her tides can soften stone.
I know there can be no shadows without light. I know the passion is in the risk.
I know time heals, and most things will be okay eventually. I know you are made of the star stuff, and I know out there somebody loves you; exactly the way you are, even if you haven’t found them yet.
I know all these things, and tell them to you — in case you forgot to remember.” —Jacquelyn Taylor
“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” —James Baldwin
“We have tried to create a watertight social system so that mercy is not needed, nor even attractive. Mercy admits and accepts that not all problems can be solved by our techniques, formulas, and technology. The ‘superfluous’ opening of the human heart that we call mercy is essential for any structure or institution to remain human and humanizing.” —Richard Rohr
“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.” —Anne Lamott
“Your heart and my heart are very, very old friends.” —Hafiz
“Now I see the secret of making the best persons, it is to grow in the open air and eat and sleep with the earth.” —Walt Whitman
“Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.” —John Muir
“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.” —Roald Dahl
“A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as she is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things she would not have thought of if she had not started to say them.” —William Stafford (but I have changed the pronouns to feminine)
“America stands for exactly what Americans will stand for. History doesn’t write itself. It must be lived and practiced.” —Jesse Williams
Today is Maundy Thursday. If you live your life by stories, and if the Jesus story is one of those, this is a night about the intimacy of friendship, about vulnerability and awkwardness, about love and impending loss, about betrayal and suspicion. It’s about the revolution of upside-down: the last will be first and the first will be last.
If this and the coming days are important parts of your story, I wish you blessings in the contemplation. Meanwhile, Passover continues, and blessings to those of you who mark that season. Meanwhile, the fasting month of Ramadan continues, and blessings to you who mark that season. Meanwhile, we are in the season of Ostara which leads to Beltane, and blessings to you who mark that season.
Last night my friend Tim sent me a message. He’d pulled six evocative lines from an article he was reading about dreaming in different languages, and he suggested that we each write poems using those lines. I love this challenge.
Here is my first poem. The first and last lines of the poem are the first phrase he suggested. I am playing with form here. I was teaching my Creative Writers today about Terrance Hayes’ Golden Shovel form, in which he takes Gwendolyn Brooks’ Poem “We Real Cool” and ends each line with a word of her poem. If you just read down the right side of his poem, you’ll see hers embedded at the ends of the lines. He has two parts to his poem, and the second stanza is incredibly innovative, fracturing words in odd places, giving the sense of something having broken in between the two stanzas, which are labeled 1981 and 1991.
So I took the idea of the Golden Shovel. I began and ended the poem with the same line. In the first stanza, I embedded the words of the phrase down the left side of the lines, and in the second, I embedded the words at the right, as in a Golden Shovel. I feel like I made a box, hemming in the poem with the starter line on top and bottom and running down parts of left and right sides.
Gratitude List: 1. Community rituals 2. Knowing how to breathe and ground when I begin to feel anxious and panicky 3. Kind, loving souls who live with grace 4. Learning, always learning to Become 5. Re-Wilding my spirit May we walk in Beauty!
“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.” —Terry Pratchett
The Happy Virus by Hafez I caught the happy virus last night When I was out singing beneath the stars. It is remarkably contagious— So kiss me.
“It is our mind, and that alone, that chains us or sets us free.” —Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.” —George Orwell
“We must live from the center.” —Bahauddin, father of Rumi
“Some days I am more wolf than woman and I am still learning how to stop apologising for my wild.” —Nikita Gill
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” —Albert Einstein
“Writer’s block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.” —Joseph Campbell
“Ask yourself: Have you been kind today? Make kindness your daily modus operandi and change your world.” —Annie Lennox
“Anyone out there want to sing with me while we finish this march? I realize it may seem a little counter-intuitive right now, with so many in a somber mood, but the harder the walk gets, the more I think we need to meet its challenge with strong hearts and voices. The singing becomes our anthem, a rebuke to the powers of pain and an exaltation of the indomitable human spirit. If we must move forward against all odds, then let us do so singing. Let them hear us coming. Let them know we have only just started to hit our stride.” —Steven Charleston
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.
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
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
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
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)
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
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
Mockingbird Chronicles 