Listen, are you breathing just a little,
and calling it a life?
Mary Oliver, Have you ever tried to enter the Long Black Branches
The question before me, now that I
am old, is not how to be dead,
which I know from enough practice,
but how to be alive, as these worn
hills still tell, and some paintings
of Paul Cézanne, and this mere
singing wren, who thinks he’s alive
forever, this instant, and may be.
Wendell Berry, Sabbaths, 2001, VIII
I want to know if you can see beauty … every day,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.
Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation
Photo: Glendalough, June 18 2015
If you have one hour of air and many hours to go,
you must breathe slowly.
If you have one arm’s length and many things to care for,
you must give freely.
If you have one chance to know God and many doubts, you must
set your heart on fire.
We are blessed.
Every day is a chance.
We have two arms
Fear wastes air.
Mark Nepo, Freefall
The cave you are afraid to enter
[is..] the source of what you are looking for.
Joseph Campbell
photo EMeczKa
Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change
and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
Helen Keller.
photo matpib
Whenever one of these states arise, just know that it has arisen. To see feelings in the right way is to see them as a sort of imposter, not identifying them as ourselves. Anger or doubt are not us: they are not people or beings. So see them without giving them an identity, as just strangers coming in and then leaving. When there is cause they arise, and when there is no cause they fall away.
Ven Pramote Pamojjo, To see the Truth
photo daquella Manera
