And did you feel it, in your heart,
how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
Mary Oliver, Swan
Sunday Quote: Beauty
Tag: Life
Our loving thoughts
Let all peoples be happy, weak or strong, of high, middle, low estate, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far away, alive or still to be born. May they all be entirely happy. Let nobody lie to anybody or despise any single being anywhere. May no one wish harm to any single creature out of anger or hatred. Let us cherish all creatures as a mother her only child. May our loving thoughts fill the whole world above, below, across without limit of boundless goodwill toward the whole world, unrestricted, free of hatred and enmity.
Early Buddhist aspiration, quoted by Karen Armstrong in her lecture Faith after Sept 11
As temporary as clouds
You who are training your daughters to check for the words
“Calvin Klein” before they look to see if there are pockets
are giving them no hands to put in those pockets.
You are giving them eyes that will find nothing solid in stones.
No comfort in rough land, nameless sheep trails.
No answers from things which do not speak.
Since when do children sketch dreams with price tags attached?
Don’t tell me they were born this way.
We were all born like empty fields.
What we are now shows what has been planted.
Will you remind them there were people
who hemmed their days with thick-spun wool
and wore them till they fell apart?
Think of darkness hugging the houses,
caring nothing for the material of our pyjamas.
Think of the delicate mesh of neckbones
when you clasp the golden chains.
These words the world rains back and forth
are temporary as clouds.
Clouds? Tell your children to look up.
The sky is the only store worth shopping in
for anything as long as life.
Naomi Shihab Nye, Rebellion Against the North Side (extracts)
Depth
Real wisdom, tested over time, is different from the quick-fix fads that are fashionable today
Be careful.
Open your life
Only to the wind that has touched distance.
Natan Zach,1930 – 2020, Israeli poet, Be Careful
Do not lose hope
I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there.
And there’s a whole life in that,
in knowing that the sun is there.
Dostoyevsky
Start again
On holidays. Travel allows us see life with new eyes.
I was so proud not to feel my heart.
Waking means being angry.
This year will take from me
the hardened person
who I longed to be.
I am healing by mistake.
Rome is also built on ruins.
Eliza Griswold, 1973 – , American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and poet, Ruins
Mindfulbalance 