July/August 2021 (Vol. XXXIV, No. 7)

Dear Friends ~ To create, no matter the artform, is a tender and vulnerable calling. When my partner, Luke, makes a basket, he starts in the woods, at the edge of a field, or by a roadside where he quietly notices. He looks for the specific plants he'll use, observing whether they are abundant or few, and whether they are at the ideal point in their growing cycle. Eventually, after he has respectfully harvested vines or taken a young tree, he carries the plants home, now responsible to whittle them down carefully and prepare them to be woven or joined together. This is the part of the creative process that recalls Michelangelo's famous quote: "Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it". Like a writer staring at a blank page, or a potter holding a lump of clay, there is a necessary courage inherent to opening oneself to a practice that has no guaranteed outcome.

Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul.
~ Alice Walker
Alice Walker create
Unless we are creators, we are not fully alive... Remember, the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker.
~ Madeleine L'Engle in WALKING ON WATER
Madeleine L'Engle Walking On Water create
I rarely think of poetry as something I make happen; it is more accurate to say that it happens to me. Like a summer storm, a house afire, or the coincidence of both on the same day. Like a car wreck, only with more illuminating results. I've overheard poems, virtually complete, in elevators or restaurants where I was minding my own business... When a poem does arrive, I gasp as if an apple had fallen into my hand, and give thanks for the luck involved. Poems are everywhere, but easy to miss. I know I might very well stand under that tree all day, whistling, looking off to the side, waiting for a red delicious poem to fall so I could own it forever. But like as not, it wouldn't. Instead it will fall right while I'm in the middle of changing the baby, or breaking up a rodeo event involving my children and the dog, or wiping my teary eyes while I'm chopping onions and listening to the news; then that apple will land with a thud and roll under the bed with the dust bunnies and lie there forgotten and lost for all time. There are dusty, lost poems all over my house, I assure you. In yours, too, I'd be willing to bet... I've lost so many I can't count them. I do understand that they fall when I'm least able to pay attention because poems fall not from a tree, really, but from the richly pollinated boughs of an ordinary life, buzzing, as lives do, with clamor and glory.
~ Barbara Kingsolver from "Stealing Apples" in SMALL WONDER
Barbara Kingsolver Small Wonder create

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can't see, can't hear;
Can't know except in moments...
...we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

~ Joy Harjo in "Eagle Poem" from IN MAD LOVE AND WAR
Joy Harjo In Mad Love And War create
We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.
~ Henry Ward Beecher
Henry Ward Beecher create

Because in trying to articulate what, perhaps, joy is, it has occurred to me that among other things—the trees and the mushrooms have shown me this—joy is the mostly invisible, the underground union between us, you and me, which is, among other things, the great fact of our life and the lives of everyone and thing we love going away. If we sink a spoon into that fact, into the duff between us, we will find it teeming. It will look like all the books ever written. It will look like all the nerves in a body. We might call it sorrow, but we might call it a union, one that, once we notice it, once we bring it into the light, might become flower and food. Might be joy.

~ Ross Gay in THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS
Ross Gay The Book Of Delights create
In order to create, I must be still.
~ Jan Kendy-Fragas
Jan Kendy-Fragas create
For most of us, knowledge of our world comes largely through sight, yet we look about with such unseeing eyes that we are partially blind. One way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, 'What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?'
~ Rachel Carson from THE SENSE OF WONDER
Rachel Carson The Sense Of Wonder create
Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.
~ Toni Morrison in THE BLUEST EYE
Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye create
I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?
~ Kathleen Norris in THE PSALMS WITH COMMENTARY
Kathleen Norris The Psalms With Commentary create

Boredom is — yes, the runway of creativity. That's the way I tell my youngest, if she ever says it. I'm like, "Great! You're bored! That means you're a little uncomfortable. And you know what? This incredible, creative world is right at the edge of that uncomfortableness," because it inevitably happens that you'll have to create your own sense of creativity...

...Your mind is in its most supple, creative state when it's off leash...we need to create more space off leash. And even now, when I step in the shower, I think, don't turn on the news, don't turn on anything, and just take a shower, because that's why you have your best ideas when you're in the shower or doing dishes or taking a walk. And we've just filled every waking moment with stimulation and input, and you need time to digest and create new thoughts...and figure out how you think about it and how it integrates to your larger narrative and — it's just such a great thing, to create that space to think.

~ Tiffany Shlain from "Living the Questions" podcast interview with Krista Tippett
Tiffany Shlain create
Creation is lifework, creation is how...you spend your life, you cannot divide life and the creation, it's impossible.
~ Yohji Yamamoto
Yohji Yamamoto create
"Scrape the willow until it sings..."
~ Julia Parker, Coast Miwok-Kashaya Pomo basket weaver
Julia Parker create
Sometimes I wish I could photosynthesize so that just by being, just by shimmering at the meadow's edge or floating lazily on a pond, I could be doing the work of the world while standing silent in the sun.
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer in BRAIDING SWEETGRASS
Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass create
Serious art is born from serious play.
~ Julia Cameron in THE ARTIST'S WAY
Julia Cameron The Artist's Way create
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
~ Joseph Chilton Pearce
Joseph Chilton Pearce create

March 2021 (Vol. XXXIV, No. 3)

Dear Friends ~ As a person who carries a lot of anxiety, I often find comfort in the amorphous, gray, quiet moments at dawn. Passing out of sleep's depths and just before rejoining the clamor of everyday life, my senses are clear and heightened. At the threshold of the day, I feel more courage to notice the world around me and more ready to engage in the present moment.

I've come to appreciate how our inner lives tend to mirror the physical cycle of morning into day into night and back into morning; when the soul emerges from periods of rest and dormancy to revel in those threshold moments that usher us into new energy and vibrancy: Awakening.

... God said, 'There will be dreams from the night that will need the light of the morning.’ And so God put wisdom in the early hours.

... God said: 'Let there be a certain kind of light that can only be seen in the morning.’ And God created gold, and dew, and horizons, and hills in the distance, and faces that look different in the light of the morning, and things that look different in the light of the morning...
And God said that it was Good.

~ Padraig O’Tuama from "A Liturgy of the Morning" in DAILY PRAYERS WITH THE CORRYMEELA COMMUNITY
Padraig O’Tuama Daily Prayers With The Corrymeela Community awakening Buy on Amazon

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

~ Lucille Clifton from "Blessing the Boats (at St. Mary's)" in QUILTING
Lucille Clifton Quilting awakening Buy on Amazon

I’m going to be sorry when I retire, because I enjoy — if it’s one thing that I definitely enjoy, it’s my 8:00 class. My 8:00 class, they come to me, 8:00 a.m., they come to me from their dreams, and I come to them from mine... I like the freshness that they bring. And the other word would be, I like the love that we have for each other as we come into that class.

~ Nikki Giovanni from "We Go Forward with a Sanity and Love" On Being podcast. Read more in THE COLLECTED POETRY OF NIKKI GIOVANNI
Nikki Giovanni awakening Buy on Amazon

The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don't go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don't go back to sleep!

~ Rumi from "A Great Wagon" in THE ESSENTIAL RUMI, translated by Coleman Barks
Rumi The Essential Rumi awakening Buy on Amazon

Uphold the Light that your inner light
may illumine fear-filled hearts...
Light comes with each new dawn.
yield to the Light within;
become a chalice of light
for the world!

~ Nan Merrill from LUMEN CHRISTI...HOLY WISDOM
Nan Merrill Lumen Christi...holy Wisdom awakening Buy on Amazon

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.

~ Rachel Carson from SILENT SPRING
Rachel Carson Silent Spring awakening Buy on Amazon

Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers.

~ May Sarton. Read more in SELECTED POEMS OF MAY SARTON
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Awakeness is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom, available in each moment of our weird, unfathomable, ordinary, everyday lives.

~ Pema Chodron from WHEN THINGS FALL APART
Pema Chodron When Things Fall Apart awakening Buy on Amazon

freedom always came nibbling my thought,
just as— often, in light, on the open hills—
you can pass an antelope and not know
and look back, and then— even before you see—
there is something wrong about the grass.
And then you see.

That's the way everything in the world is waiting.

~ William E. Stafford from "A Message from the Wanderer" in THE WAY IT IS
William E. Stafford The Way It Is awakening Buy on Amazon

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God's recreation of the new day

Morning has broken like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for them springing fresh from the world

~ Eleanor Farjeon from MORNING HAS BROKEN
Eleanor Farjeon awakening Buy on Amazon

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

~ Mary Oliver from "Why I Wake Early" in WHY I WAKE EARLY
Mary Oliver Why I Wake Early awakening Buy on Amazon

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.

~ Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton awakening Buy on Amazon

September 2020 (Vol. XXXIII, No. 8)

Dear Friends ~ I was standing motionless in the kitchen, completely absorbed by the articles and apps open on my phone one recent morning, when my six-year-old entered the room for his breakfast and requisite morning hug. He was chattering and asked me a question that didn't register in my distracted state, and frankly agitated me because at that early hour my mind already was stretched in countless directions and tormented by emotions about people and places far from our kitchen. Perceptive to my anxious state (and undeterred by my obvious mood), he sidled up next to me, craned his neck to see the phone screen and asked, "Mom, what are you looking for?"

Pause. "That's a great question, buddy. I'm not really sure." I put down the phone.

It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes.

~ Madeleine L'Engle in A RING OF ENDLESS LIGHT
Madeleine L'Engle A Ring Of Endless Light enough

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries...

~ Anna Akhmatova from "I Taught Myself to Live Simply"
Anna Akhmatova enough
Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations and concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature--the reassurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.
~ Rachel Carson in THE SENSE OF WONDER
Rachel Carson The Sense Of Wonder enough
This is a wonderful day. I've never seen this one before.
~ Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou enough
"It's better to know one mountain than to climb many."
~ Native American Proverb
Native American Proverb enough
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
~ Naomi Shihab Nye from "Famous"
Naomi Shihab Nye Words Under The Words enough
There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.
~ Kazuo Ishiguro in CONVERSATIONS WITH KAZUO ISHIGURO
Kazuo Ishiguro Conversations With Kazuo Ishiguro enough

To live content with small means.
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion.
To be worthy not respectable,
and wealthy not rich.
To study hard, think quietly, talk gently,
act frankly, to listen to stars, birds, babes,
and sages with open heart, to bear all cheerfully,
do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.
In a word, to let the spiritual,
unbidden and unconscious,
Grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.

~ William Ellery Channing from "My Symphony"
William Ellery Channing My Symphony enough
The value of a human being can be measured by what he or she most deeply wants. Be free of possessing things. Sit at an empty table. Be pleased with water, the taste of being at home.
~ Rumi
Rumi enough

As you open yourself to your soul, a calming sense of peace and connectedness develops within you. This peaceful feeling deepens your levels of thought, releases the innate healing powers of your body, reminds you to be grateful for all the gifts of life, and broadens your perspective, so that you can be at peace with the way things are.

~ Jack Canfield from "Rekindling the Fires of Your Soul"
Jack Canfield Handbook For The Soul enough

It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life.

~ J.R.R. Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien enough

Be happy in the moment, that is enough. Each moment is all we need, not more.

~ Mother Theresa
Mother Theresa enough

June 2020 (Vol. XXXIII, No. 6)

Dear Friends ~ We started our seeds inside, lining the south-facing windowsills, the same week that a pandemic made itself known to the collective body of the world. Tomatoes, kale, peas, carrots, lettuce, sorrel, beets...each seed tucked into the soil like a sort of prayer for health and a future. In early January, when I made my ritual list of intentions for the new year, I mystified myself writing simply, "tend food". Not "plant" or "grow" or "preserve", as much as tend. My sister-in-law once told me that the actual planting of a garden is the "glamorous" part because it's noticeable and satisfying in the immediate. But growing food also requires long months of patient attention: weeding, watering, waiting, hoping, pruning, tying, waiting, hoping...tending.

...Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies.

Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears.
Let us name the harsh light and soft darkness that surround us...
The world is big, and wide, and wild and wonderful and wicked,
and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable and full of meaning.
Oremus.
Let us pray.
~ Pádraig Ó Tuama, from "Oremus," in DAILY PRAYER WITH THE CORRYMEELA COMMUNITY
Pádraig Ó Tuama Daily Prayer With The Corrymeela Community going in
Cultivate personal rituals of solitude. Learn to be with it all. Become immense inside. Set your prayers on fire.
~ Mary Ellen Lough
Mary Ellen Lough going in
O my Beloved, you are my shepherd,
I shall not want;
You bring me to green pastures for rest
and lead me beside still waters
renewing my spirit,
You restore my soul.
You lead me in the path of goodness
to follow Love's way...

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of all my fears...

and I shall dwell in the heart
of the Beloved
forever.
~ Nan Merrill, excerpt from Psalm 23 in PSALMS FOR PRAYING
Nan Merrill Psalms For Praying going in

Being alone — physically alone atop a mountain — reminds me of how seldom one is alone in the sort of urbanized life we live nowadays. As I sat, there was a certain peace which I was able to capture for a moment. This physical aloneness is by no means the same as loneliness — not even close kin to it; for I was not alone. On occasions when I am able to get to a mountain top, the realization of the nature of the "mountain-top experience" returns anew.

~ Sara Lawrence Lightfoot, from BALM IN GILEAD
Sara Lawrence Lightfoot Balm In Gilead going in
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
~ John Muir, from JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS
John Muir John Of The Mountains going in
You might as well answer the door, my child, the truth is furiously knocking.
~ Lucille Clifton, from GOOD WOMAN
Lucille Clifton Good Woman going in

Claim your silence...We—a society so obsessed with noise, news clips, action, arguments, debates, anger, confrontation, stimulation and busy-ness—must recreate ourselves and re-carve a place of silence (some might call it prayer) in our lives. It is a great healing measure for the wounded world outside of us, and the wounded world within us.

~ Lyla June Johnston
Lyla June Johnston going in
Until the culture recognizes the legitimacy of growing down, each person in the culture struggles blindly to make sense of the darkness that the soul requires to deepen into life.
~ James Hillman
James Hillman going in
If you wish to love you must learn to see again...You must tear away from your being the roots of society that have penetrated to the marrow. You must drop out. Externally everything will go on as before, you will continue to be in the world, but no longer of it...And in your heart you will now be free at last and utterly alone...There is no one there by your side, absolutely no one. At first it will seem unbearable, but that is only because you are unaccustomed to aloneness. But if you manage to stay there for a while the desert will suddenly blossom into Love.
~ Anthony De Mello, from THE WAY TO LOVE
Anthony de Mello The Way To Love going in

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

~ Wendell Berry, excerpt from "The Wild Geese" in THE SELECTED POEMS OF WENDELL BERRY
Wendell Berry The Selected Poems Of Wendell Berry going in

Be patient where you sit in the dark...Dawn is coming.

~ Rumi
Rumi going in

March 2020 (Vol. XXXIII, No. 3)

Dear Friends ~ The year after my first child was born could have been called A Crash Course in the Contemplative Life. Overnight my daily landscape shifted from the external and the social, to the internal and the domestic. My driving need for productivity and efficiency made no sense in a newborn's routine. I faced rhythmic but unscheduled days with swaths of quiet time. A part of me panicked without the markers of purpose and meaning I had always used to define myself, but the new pulse of our home and the simple yet powerful needs of my baby created a steady familiarity with silence.

God who loves us knows us. We long to be known, not only from the outside but from within. We feel that if others knew us as we really are, with our hopes, dreams and struggles to be whole, they would have a compassionate and tolerant love for us. Conversely, were we to live for an hour within the mind of another, even that of a social outcast, we would come away humbled and more understanding. We cannot know people from within, only from without and with difficulty despite our love. Not so with God. The Spirit of God has been poured out on us. God has made a home in us.

~ by Sean Caulfield in THE GOD OF ORDINARY PEOPLE
Sean Caulfield The God Of Ordinary People home

What if becoming who and what we truly are happens not through striving and trying but by recognizing and receiving the people and places and practices that offer us the warmth of encouragement when we need to unfold?
How would this shape the choices you make about how to spend today?

~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer from Prelude to "The Dance"
Oriah Mountain Dreamer home
Let go into the clear light, trust it, merge with it,
and enter the Silence, your true home.

The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be.
~ Shakti Gawain
Shakti Gawain home

I love you, gentlest of Ways...

You, the great homesickness we could never shake off,
you, the forest that always surrounded us...

~ by Rainer Maria Rilke from "Ich Liebe dich, du sanftestes Gesetz", translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy
Rainer Maria Rilke Rilke's Book Of Hours: Love Poems To God home
Once we begin to see our lives within our own families as opportunities for spiritual development, the possibility of inner growth is unlimited. Home is no longer just a place to eat and sleep, but a school for our souls and spirits. Each day yields its lesson, and our children and partners become our teachers. We find our rhythm and learn to harmonize. We learn how to cherish and care for one another and how to care for our own souls as well. We learn to dance together, how to lead and when to follow. In so doing, we bring about changes both large and small, for our children, nurtured by rhythm, may ultimately heal and restore the rhythm of the world.
~ by Katrina Kenison in MITTEN STRINGS FOR GOD
Katrina Kenison Mitten Strings For God home
The stars up in the bright sky
When it's nighttime.
The people eating inside.
The animals eating outside.
Amen.
~ The prayer of a 3-year-old
home
When someone deeply listens to you it is like holding out a dented cup you've had since childhood and watching it fill up with cold, fresh water. When it balances on top of the brim, you are understood. When it overflows and touches your skin, You are loved... When someone deeply listens to you, your bare feet are on the earth and a beloved land that seemed distant is now at home within you.
~ by John Fox in FINDING WHAT YOU DIDN'T LOSE
John Fox Finding What You Didn't Lose home
...the house of my soul is narrow; enlarge it that thou mayest enter in.
~ St. Augustine
St. Augustine home
Because this bird is singing to me,
I belong to the wide wind,
The people far away who share
The air and the clouds.
Together we are looking up
Into all we do not own
And we are listening.
~ by Naomi Shihab Nye from "Messages from Everywhere"
Naomi Shihab Nye A Maze Me home
And one day, when I need
to tell myself something intelligent
about love,

I'll close my eyes
and recall this room and everything in it...
~ by Li-Young Lee from "This Room and Everything in It"
Li-Young Lee The City In Which I Love You home

What we speak becomes the house we live in.

~ Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky
Hafiz The Gift home

This is the bright home
In which I live,
This is where
I ask
My friends
To come,
This is where I want to love all the things
It has taken me so long
To learn to love.

~ by David Whyte from "The House of Belonging"
David Whyte The House Of Belonging home

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