writing : blog
Lost Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you, If you leave it you may come back again, saying…
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Start Close In -David Whyte Start close in, don’t take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don’t want to take. Start with the ground you know, the pale ground beneath your feet, your own way of starting the conversation. Start with your own question, give up on other people’s questions,…
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Consider the Hands that Write This Letter after Marina Wilson Consider the hands that write this letter. The left palm pressed flat against the paper, as it has done before, over my heart, in peace or reverence to the sea or some beautiful thing I saw once, felt once: snow falling like rice flung from the giants’ wedding, or the…
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Fresh To move Cleanly. Needing to be Nowhere else. Wanting nothing From any store. To lift something You already had And set it down in A new place. Awakened eye Seeing freshly. What does that do to The old blood moving through Its channels? -Naomi Shihab Nye [image from here]
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. -Reinhold Niebuhr (Excerpt…
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Who Said It Was Simple There are so many roots to the tree of anger that sometimes the branches shatter before they bear. Sitting in Nedicks the women rally before they march discussing the problematic girls they hire to make them free. An almost white counterman passes a waiting brother to serve them first and the ladies neither notice nor…
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Why Bodhidharma Went to Howard Johnson’s “Where is your home,” the interviewer asked him. Here. “No, no,” the interviewer said, thinking it a problem of translation, “when you are where you actually live.” Now it was his turn to think, perhaps the translation? -Jane Hirshfield (The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry) Where are you when you are where…
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A Note Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings; to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur; to tell pain from everything it’s not; to squeeze inside events, dawdle in views, to seek…
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Seeing More – Discoveries? i watch the clouds drifting slowly by the trees trembling so slightly bending, leaning, straightening i watch the sun dry the deck, little by little warming the wood where my dog sleeps at my feet I watch my breathing exhaling gently expanding and open to…
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Letting You Go I loved you once. on those endless summer days in the pool, barefoot walks on hot asphalt to the corner store cigarettes for you, grape Mr. Freeze for me. eating your special Sunday scrambled eggs with ketchup planting backyard rows of majestic purple irises and early morning chocolate glazed doughnuts you bought for me I loved you…
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Patti Digh is the author of six books, including bestsellers Life is a Verb and Creative is a Verb. She travels the world teaching others about mindfulness: to live fully, love well, let go deeply, and make a difference. Patti's comments have appeared on PBS and in The New York Times, Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, the London Financial Times, and many other international publications. She writes a thank you note every morning.
