Sunday, December 31, 2017

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something." 
Neil Gaiman

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Abandon this fleeting world, abandon yourself,
Then the moon and flowers will guide you along the Way.
- Ryokan

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Haiku - Boncho

Snow swallowed valley:
The river alone painted
A black, winding line.

Monday, December 25, 2017

Family asleep,
wind howling around the house,
gifts wait patiently.

Saturday, December 23, 2017

Shades of the NW,
gray, silver, green, brown dampness,
visits the NE.

Friday, December 22, 2017

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.
- Claude Monet

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Traveling through dreams,
through year's longest evening,
grateful light returns.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Today's tanka



Like the sunflower
May my face turn in delight
Towards the sunlight.
Today the clouds obscure you,
Maybe tomorrow it clears.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Lucky harbingers -
chickadee out my window,
woodpecker swooping.

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

The Swan


Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
- Mary Oliver

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Smudge of a sunset
rests above the low, dark hills,
barely after five.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

The winds of grace are blowing all the time,
You have only to raise your sail.

Sri Ramakrishna

Sunday, November 12, 2017

Lawns layered in gold.
Seagulls, crows - flocking, squawking -
blackbirds line the wires.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Brightest blue of sky,
leaves floating and drifting down -
after last night's freeze.

Thursday, November 9, 2017

All the rose bushes,
heedless of tomorrow's freeze,
 profusely blooming!

Monday, November 6, 2017

First, one must get to know oneself. Then, having become familiar with oneself, one can live one’s life more deeply. Living one’s life more deeply is the meaning of dharma.
— Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Brisk fall afternoon
beautiful slanting sunshine
day of remembrance.

Monday, October 30, 2017

My encouragement is not to look back on what has happened, not to have any regrets. Regret is from the world of conditioning. What happened happened. We start over in each moment, here and now.
- Cheri  Huber

Friday, October 27, 2017

“If we can’t find God right here, in this space, then we will not find God by going anywhere else.”

--- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD Desert Mothers and Fathers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings Annotated and Explained

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Enlightenment is simply intimacy with all things. Not knowing is most intimate.
- Dogen

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

I Said to the Wanting Creature


I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?
There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!

And there is nobody, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great absence, you will find nothing.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary
things,
and stand firm in that which you are.
 
I Said to the Wanting Creature, by Kabir, trans. Robert Bly

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.
— Terry Tempest Williams

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

"A complementary metaphor for pilgrimage is that of art-making as a vessel or sacred space. A tabernacle is a dwelling place for the holy. The arts help us to make space for an encounter with God while also creating a safe container in which to experiment and explore new possibilities.”

--- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD & Betsey Beckman, MM Awakening the Creative Spirit: Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction

Thursday, October 5, 2017

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Friday, September 29, 2017

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

~ Lord Byron

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.

~ Banana Yoshimoto

Saturday, September 23, 2017

Psalm


Lord, there are creatures in the understory,
snails with whorled backs and silver boots,
trails beetles weave in grass, black rivers
of ants, unbound ladybugs opening their wings,
spotted veils and flame, untamed choirs
of banjo-colored crickets and stained-glass cicadas.
Lord, how shall we count the snakes and frogs
and moths?  How shall we love the hidden
and small? Mushrooms beneath leaves
constructing their death domes in silence,
their silken gills and mycelial threads, cap scales
and patches, their warts and pores. And the buried
bulbs that will bloom in spring, pregnant with flower
and leaf, sing Prepare for My Radiance, Prepare
for the Pageantry of My Inevitable Surprise.
These are the queendoms, the spines and horns,
the clustered hearts beating beneath our feet. Lord
though the earth is locked in irons of ice and snow
there are angels in the undergrowth, praise them.
____
© Dorianne Laux.  All Rights Reserved.

Friday, September 22, 2017

Equinox fireworks,
saluting change of seasons.
early darkness falls.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Time of the Eleusinian mysteries

Plutarch who once wrote:
"because of those sacred and faithful promises given in the mysteries...we hold it firmly for an undoubted truth that our soul is incorruptible and immortal. Let us behave ourselves accordingly."

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Up before the sun,
faint sound of wild geese calling,
above cricket's song.

Sunday, September 17, 2017

Hedge across the street-
Fall of snowy clematis
Now a fizz of frizz

Saturday, September 16, 2017

"Peregrinatio is also a unique type of pilgrimage many of the Celtic monks embarked upon, setting sail in a boat without rudder or oar, letting the currents of love carry them to the 'place of their resurrection.' It is a journey of trust and yielding."

Friday, September 15, 2017

"How do we enter into the space of disorientation and disintegration? The more we hold onto how we think things should be, the more suffering we will experience. When we are able to release our thoughts and expectations and enter into a reality much greater than us, the more we cultivate what the dark night comes to teach us."
 

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don’t see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?
- Lao Tzu

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Breakfast enjoyed
In the fine company
Of morning glories.
- Basho

Monday, September 11, 2017


"[The Desert Mothers and Fathers] sought ‘hesychia’, which is the Greek word for stillness. It means more than silence or peacefulness. There is a sense in which the stillness is the deep, shimmering presence of the holy."

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Eternity has nothing to do with time. Time is what shuts you out from eternity. Eternity is now.
- Joseph Campbell

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

My own belief is that the universe exists as a miracle and that we have been born here to witness and celebrate. We wonder at our purpose for living. Our purpose is to perceive the fantastic. Why have a universe if there is no audience?
- Ray Bradbury

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

The willingness to avail ourselves of the love, acceptance, and compassion Life offers us is how we learn to have love, acceptance, and compassion for others.
- Cheri Huber

Sunday, September 3, 2017

The tree stands golden
after days of gray and rain
the setting sun gilds.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

When Death Come


 
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
 
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
 
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
 
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
 
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
 
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
 
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
 
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
 
When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
 
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
 
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
 
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world
— Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of the desk; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighboring wood…. In all these I am practicing Zen, I am living Zen. No wordy discussion is necessary, nor any explanation. I do not know why, and there is no need of explaining, but when the sun rises the whole world dances with joy and everybody’s heart is filled with bliss. If Zen is at all conceivable, it must be taken hold of here.
― D.T. Suzuki

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Whatever I’ve been through in my life cannot compare to the gift of life. Against unfathomable odds, I was conceived and born. Against even greater odds, I have lived and continue to live. It is the greatest gift to wake up every morning into a swirling world and to be given air to breathe, water to drink, a sun and a moon, stars, rivers, trees, birds flitting and singing, ants making their homes beneath the sidewalks, a summer storm … I don’t know, who could not want to fall to their knees in gratitude?
- Dorianne Laux

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Up at dawn, the dewy freshness of the hour, the morning rapture of the birds, the daily miracle of sunrise, set her heart in tune, and gave her Nature's most healing balm.

~ Louisa May Alcott

Friday, August 18, 2017

Every morning we are born anew.  What we do today is what matters most.  Buddha

Monday, August 7, 2017

"Summer calls me to relish the gifts of slowness, attention, and wonder. The season immerses me in the sacramental imagination—the recognition that everything is holy, everything shimmers with the sacred presence if we only slow down enough to see."

--- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD

Thursday, August 3, 2017

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
— Pablo Picasso

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

The Lake Isle of Innisfree


I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
— William Butler Yeats from The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

People like you and me, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live...[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.
- Albert Einstein

Sunday, July 16, 2017

God speaks to each of us as we are made,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words, the numinous words,
we hear before we begin:
You, called forth by your senses
reach to the edge of your longing.

Become my body
grow like a fire behind things
so their shadows spread
and cover me completely

Let everything into you;
beauty and terror.
Keep going, remember
no feeling lasts forever

Don’t lose touch with me.
Nearby is the land they call life,
you will know it by its intensity.
— Rainer Maria Rilke

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Things to Think

Think in ways you've never thought before  

If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message

Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.
Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged: or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.
When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.
— Robert Bly from Morning Poems

Monday, July 10, 2017

Orchestra music,
on a mild July evening -
lounging by the lake.

Sunday, July 9, 2017

Scent of pond water,
clouds scudding across full moon,
flashes of fireflies.

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Train whistles, fireworks,
lightning bugs, mimosa blooms;
late June's evenings.

Sunday, June 25, 2017

The Sabbath

"The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world."
 ---Abraham Joshua Heschel

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Solstice

Windows wide open,
listening to birds singing.
Making BLT's.

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Early evening,
scent of flowers streaming in
wide, open windows.

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Soles stained deep purple,
doves calling thru evening,
full June moon rises.

Monday, June 12, 2017

Through blossom flurries,
dropping from tree of heaven,
white butterfly floats.

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Birds calling all day-
rain spattering mulberry,
running down gutters.

Saturday, June 10, 2017

Song of Solomon 2:10-12

10 My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
    and come away,
11 for behold, the winter is past;
    the rain is over and gone.
12 The flowers appear on the earth,
    the time of singing[a] has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
    is heard in our land.

Friday, June 9, 2017

Litany of Contradictory Things

Wheat and weeds:

       let them grow together…
Rich and poor, humble and haughty:
       let them grow together.
Those whose thinking is similar and contrary:
       let them grow together.
Those whose feelings are transparent or concealed:
       let them grow together.
Days of sparseness and days of plenty:
       let them grow together.
Winter, spring, summer, fall:
       let them grow together.
All the seasons of one’s life:
       let them grow together.
Joys and sorrow, laughter, tears:
       let them grow together.
Strength and weakness:
       let them grow together.
Doubt and faith:
       let them grow together.
Denial and commitment:
       let them grow together.
Preoccupation and freedom:
       let them grow together.
Virtue and vice:
       let them grow together.
Contemplation and action:
       let them grow together.
Giving and receiving:
       let them grow together.
The helpful and the helpless:
       let them grow together.
Wisdom of the East and West:
       let them grow together.
All contrarieties of the Spirit:
       let them grow together.
            –Excerpted and adapted from Michael Moynahan, SJ

Thursday, June 8, 2017

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
Wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life—

What can anyone give you greater than now,
Starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
- William Stafford

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Against the darkness
mountain laurel's blossoming
looming storm's stillness.

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

June's sweet lambent time -
long, languorous evenings -
slow, twilight hours.

Monday, June 5, 2017

The breeze at dawn has 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

Sunday, June 4, 2017

Reading my prayers -
sun setting down the column -
pink/gold and turquoise.

Saturday, June 3, 2017

I sit sheltered, as
wind passes through the window -
and branches rustle.

Friday, June 2, 2017

Blue sky, puffy clouds;
robins singing from the ditch -
errand day delights.

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Warm, yellow blinking -
sweet unbidden miracle -
June eve's first firefly.

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

St. Symeon

Come, true light.
Come, life eternal.
Come, hidden mystery.
Come, treasure without name.
Come, rejoicing without end.
Come, light that knows no evening.
Come, raising of the fallen.
Come, resurrection of the dead.
Come, for you are yourself the desire that is within me.
Come, my breath and my life.
Come, the consolation of my humble soul.
Come, my joy, my glory, my endless delight.

Monday, May 29, 2017

A beautiful prayer by W.E.B. Du Bois

Lord of the springtime, Father of the flower, field and fruit, smile on us in these earnest days when the work is heavy and the toil wearisome, lift up our hearts, O God, to the things worthwhile - sunshine and night, the dripping rain, the song of the birds, books and music, and the voices of our friends.  Lift up our hearts to these this night and grant us Thy peace. 

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

The doves are calling -
time to cut back the bamboo,
rake up the remains.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Burn sacred incense -
drive the evil spirits out -
strike bell, ring cymbals.

Sunday, May 21, 2017

Bright red cardinal
outside the bedroom window,
guest to show, has left.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Storms blow up, pass by,
Thrushes song - morning, noon, night-
May's complete delight.

Saturday, May 13, 2017

Pink, gold, turquoise sky;
robins trilling, good evening -
cool on the front porch.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

After the meeting,
big old, full moon; pink sunset:
glorious evening.

Monday, May 8, 2017

Full moon, Jupiter,
casting shadows at midnight
barefoot on cold walk

Monday, May 1, 2017

Sunday, April 30, 2017

Friday, April 28, 2017

Swallows chittering -
Ahhh - I see they have returned
for another year!
Pink confetti snow
drifting into the gutters
puddling on sidewalks.

Thursday, April 27, 2017

The Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning,

harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
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 from Collected Poems 1957-1982

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Fading lilac blooms
droop heavily in spring rain
moving into May.

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Freshly washed new leaves -
glowing gems in the dim light-
rippling in the breeze.

Monday, April 24, 2017

Sky layered in grays,
lilac blooms are turning brown,
leaves burgeoning forth.

Sunday, April 23, 2017

Every situation - nay, every moment - is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity. 
Goethe

Friday, April 21, 2017

Life is as long as
beautiful spring days
or languorous nights.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

I know life is ex-
ceedingly short and getting
shorter by the day.

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Lilac fragrance drifts-
in full purple-ly goodness,
through the open door.

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Pink Moon - The Pond - Mary Oliver

You think it will never happen again.
Then, one night in April,
the tribes wake trilling.
You walk down to the shore.
Your coming stills them,
but little by little the silence lifts
until song is everywhere
and your soul rises from your bones
and strides out over the water.
It is a crazy thing to do -
for no one can live like that,
floating around in the darkness
over the gauzy water.
Left on the shore your bones
keep shouting come back!
But your soul won't listen;
in the distance it is sparkling
like hot wires. So,
like a good friend,
you decide to follow.
You step off the shore
and plummet to your knees -
you slog forward to your thighs
and sink to your cheekbones -
and now you are caught
by the cold chains of the water -
you are vanishing while around you
the frogs continue to sing, driving
their music upward through your own throat,
not even noticing
you are someone else.
And that's when it happens -
you see everything
through their eyes,
their joy, their necessity;
you wear their webbed fingers;
your throat swells.
And that's when you know
you will live whether you will or not,
one way or another,
because everything is everything else,
one long muscle.
Its no more mysterious than that.
So you relax, you don't fight it anymore,
the darkness coming down
called water,
called spring,
called the green leaf, called
a woman's body
as it turns into mud and leaves,
as it beats in its cage of water,
as it turns like a lonely spindle
in the moonlight, as it says
yes.

Saturday, April 8, 2017

Listen more often to things than to beings;
The fire’s voice is heard,
Hear the voice of water.
Hear in the wind
The bush sob:
It is the ancestor’s breath.
Those who have died have never left,
They are in the brightening shadow
And in the thickening shadow;
The dead are not under the earth,
They are in the rustling tree,
They are in the groaning woods,
They are in the flowing water,
They are in the still water,
They are in the hut, they are in the crowd:
The dead are not dead.
Listen more often
To things than beings;
The fire’s voice is heard,
Hear the voice of water.
Hear in the wind
The bush sob:
It is the ancestor’s breath,
The breath of dead ancestors
Who have not left,
Who are not under the earth,
Who are not dead.
Those who have died have never left,
They are in the woman’s breast,
They are in the wailing child
And in the kindling firebrand.
The dead are not under the earth,
They are in the fire dying down,
They are in the moaning rock,
They are in the crying grass,
They are in the forest, they are in the home:
The dead are not dead.
--Birago Diop

Friday, April 7, 2017

Chill, gray, early spring
morning - chartreuse maple pops,
bursting on bare limbs.

Thursday, April 6, 2017

Lovely rainy day,
turning the grass emerald
against the dark earth.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Bradford pear leafing,
the shiny crow sits above
on mimosa branch.

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Taking morning tea,
the monk remains in silence -
chrysanthemums bloom.

Matsuo Basho

Friday, March 31, 2017

May disappointments
vanish like the morning mists
with the rising sun.

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Lovely evening,
sun setting on peach blossoms,
as Chinese painting.

Monday, March 27, 2017

As a blind man feels when he finds a pearl in a dustbin, so am I amazed by the miracle of Bodhi rising in my consciousness. It is the nectar of immortality that delivers us from death, the treasure that lifts us above poverty into the wealth of giving to life, the tree that gives shade to us when we roam about scorched by life, the bridge that takes us across the stormy river of life, the cool moon of compassion that calms our mind when it is agitated, the sun that dispels darkness, the butter made from the milk of kindness by churning it with the dharma. It is a feast of joy to which all are invited.
- Shantideva

Sunday, March 26, 2017

I takes one a long time to become young. 
Pablo Picasso

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which  were overcome while trying to succeed. 
Booker T. Washington

Friday, March 24, 2017

Is it so small a thing
To have enjoyed the sun
To have lived light in the spring
To have loved, to have thought,
 to have done?
Matthew Arnold

Monday, March 20, 2017

And now...

for something completely different...
yay, the vernal equinox!

Monday, March 13, 2017

Watching snow swirling,
ceaselessly, drifting, changing,
the whole, long morning.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

After images
 reveal true colors, not white,
but glaring blue light.

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Sometimes I see my
self in the mirror and laugh
at who I've become

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Monday, February 20, 2017

"This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond."
– Rumi, The Guest House

Saturday, February 18, 2017


'I would like to paint the way a bird sings.' - Claude Monet

Friday, February 17, 2017


wildernesssociety“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.” - Teddy Roosevelt.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

The Summer Day - Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down --
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Vigilance is a state of conscious alertness and full-bore engagement:
Hold a vivid and dynamic vision of collective well-being and a truly positive future.
Act from a place of radical inclusion.
Listen with full-bodied attention to unspoken wounds and to the whispers of indefatigable hope.
Activate the fullest expression of your own morally inspired conscience.
Incarnate and manifest your values down to the finest detail.
Attune to Mother Nature’s gathering voice and speak her language with eloquent clarity.
Attest to the power of love and warm its fires by building beloved community.
-  James O'Dea

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

- Marcus Aurelius


"Dwell on the beauty of life.

 Watch the stars,

 and see yourself running with them."