American Biographies | Friends of Silence

Barbara Kingsolver

In feigned completeness I would walk the lonely
longest distance between all points and all others
because in their connection my geometry will have
been faithful to its own imagined laws.

~ from "American Biographies" in ANOTHER AMERICA by Barbara Kingsolver

Another America

dissatisfaction

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Quote of the Day

"Make of yourself a light,"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness....
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields...
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves...
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire—
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value...

~ Mary Oliver, excerpts from "The Buddha's Last Instruction" in HOUSE OF LIGHT