Year: 2018

Sunday Quote: Wilderness

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No one escapes the wilderness on the way to the promised land

Annie Dilliard

Mud

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Continuing with a sequence of Mary Oliver poems for autumn. A lot of wind and rain here yesterday and overnight. Plenty of mud…

Angels are wonderful but they are so, well, aloof.
It’s what I sense in the mud and the roots of the
trees, or the well, or the barn, or the rock with
its citron map of lichen that halts my feet and 
makes my eyes flare, feeling the presence of some
spirit, some small god, who abides there.

If I were a perfect person, I would be bowing
continuously. 
I’m not, though I pause wherever I feel this
holiness, which is why I’m so often late coming
back from wherever I went.

Forgive me.

Mary Oliver, Forgive me

Mountains

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These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb

Najwa Zebian, Lebanese-Canadian author and educator

Where we are

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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. I can be received gladly or grudgingly, in big gulps or in tiny tastes, like a deer at the salt

Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies, Some Thoughts on Faith

Slowly, evenly

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Drink you tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Live in the moment

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The interesting thing about this work is that we don’t really do anything for them. If we tried, I think we would fail miserably. Instead we invite them to do something radically new for themselves, namely to experiment with living intentionally from moment to moment. When I was talking to a reporter, she said, “Oh, you mean to live for the moment:” I said “No, it isn’t that. That has a hedonistic ring to it. I mean to live in the moment.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living