
Do what you love.
Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality.
Be not simply good – be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau

Do what you love.
Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality.
Be not simply good – be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau
…you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched
by the passing foil of water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.
Mary Oliver, The Poet with his face in his hands

Life consists in penetrating the unknown
and fashioning our actions in accord
with the new knowledge thus acquired
Leo Tolstoy

Do you bow your head when you pray
or do you look up into that blue space?
Take your choice, prayers fly from all directions.
And don’t worry about what language you use,
God no doubt understands them all.
Even when the swans are flying north
and making such a ruckus of noise,
God is surely listening and understanding.
Rumi said, There is no proof of the soul.
But isn’t the return of spring
and how it springs up in our hearts a pretty good hint?
Yes, I know, God’s silence never breaks,
but is that really a problem?
There are thousands of voices, after all.
And furthermore, don’t you imagine (I just suggest it)
that the swans know about as much as we do
about the whole business?
So listen to them and watch them,
singing as they fly.
Take from it what you can.
Mary Oliver, Whistling Swans
How strange that the nature of life is to change but the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into what we were meant to be
Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times can Help us Grow