“Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, as as beautiful as life.” John Muir
Quote of the Day:
“I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one but I will give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years and I still don’t know:
am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?”
Rainer Maria Rilke
Quote of the Day:
“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love…. Life always says Yes and No simultaneously. Death (I implore you to believe) is the true Yea-sayer. It stands before eternity and says only: Yes.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
Quote of the Day:
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” Louise Erdrich
Poetry of the Day:
I Was Popular in Certain Circles
Among the river rats and the leaves.
For example. I was huge among the lichen,
and the waterfall couldn’t get enough
of me. And the gravestones?
I was hugely popular with the gravestones.
Also with the meat liquefying
beneath. I’d say to the carrion birds,
I’d say, “Are you an eagle? I can’t see
so well.” That made them laugh until we
were screaming. Eagle. Imagine.
The vultures loved me so much they’d feed
me the first morsel. From their delicate
talons, which is what I called them:
such delicate talons. They loved me so deeply
they’d visit in pairs. One to feed me.
One to cover my eyes with its velvety wings.
Which were heavy as theater curtains. Which I was
sure to remark on. “Why can’t I see what I’m eating?”
I’d say. And the wings would pull me into
the great bird’s chest. And I’d feel the nail
inside my mouth.
What pals I was with all the scavengers!
And the dead things too. What pals.
As for the living, the fox would not be outdone.
We’d sit on the cliff’s edge and watch the river
like a movie and I’d say, “I think last night…”
and the fox would put his paw on top of mine
and say, “Forget it. It’s done.”
I mean, we had fun. You haven’t lived until a fox
has whispered something the ferns told him in your one good ear. I mean truly.
You have not lived.
by Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Quote of the Day:
“Maybe death isn’t darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us.” Mary Oliver
Quote of the Day:
“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to the silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”
Oscar Wilde
Quote of the Day:
“Grief is love that has nowhere to go.” Roshi Joan Halifax
Quote of the Day:
“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” A.A. Milne
Quote of the Day:
“You can’t do anything with the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.”
Evan Easr
Quote of the Day:
“I hope to arrive to my death, late, in love, and a little drunk.” Atticus
Quote of the Day:
“Mostly it is loss that teaches us about the worth of things.” Arthur Schopenhauer
Quote of the Day:
“It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happy Winter Solstice & Great Conjunction of Jupiter & Saturn
To view the Solstice light filter through Ireland’s sacred site of Bru Na Boinne, see the new film by their National Monuments Service, Archaeology: https://fb.watch/2wG8PiXqqT/
Something to ponder:
“Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things.
Feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where an Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see that this could be you,
how he was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it til your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore. Only kindness that ties your shoes and send you out into the day to gaze at bread.
Only kindness that raises its head to say:
It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.”
Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952
Quote of the Day:
“To go into the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark, without sight, And find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
And is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.”
Wendell Berry
Quote of the Day:
“I prefer winter and Fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.”
Andrew Wyeth
Quote of the Day:
“Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.”
Martin Luther
Inspiration for the Day
“The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.” Francis Weller
Inspiration for the Day
”Every minute someone leaves this world behind. We are all in “the line” without knowing it. We never know how many people are before us.
We can not move to the back of the line.
We can not step out of the line.
We can not avoid the line.
So while we wait in line -
Make moments count.
Make priorities.
Make the time.
Make your gifts known.
Make a nobody feel like a somebody.
Make your voice heard.
Make the small things big.
Make someone smile.
Make the change.
Make love.
Make up.
Make peace.
Make sure to tell your people they are loved.
Make sure to have no regrets.
Make sure you are ready.”
(author unknown)