People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life.  I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. - Joseph Campbell

 All that is sweet, delightful, and amiable in this world, in the serenity of the air, the
fineness of seasons, the joy of light, the melody of sounds, the beauty of colors, the
fragrancy of smells, the splendor of precious stones, is nothing else but Heaven
breaking through the veil of this world.
- William Law

Under the Harvest Moon

 

Under the harvest moon, 
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker, 
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses 
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories, 
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

Carl Sandburg 

 Awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own
presence.
- John O’Donohue

 God requires a faithful fulfillment of the merest trifle given us to do, rather than
the most ardent aspiration to things to which we are not called.
- St. François de Sales

                                                                    I breathe slowly in,

I breathe slowly out. My breath

is a pathway of peace

moving softly through me.

Each day I can breathe and be.

 

This is My Wish for You

That the spirit of beauty
may continually hover about you
and fold you close within
the tenderness of her wings.

That each beautiful
and gracious thing in life
May be unto you as a symbol
of good for your soul’s delight.

That sun-glories
and star-glories,
Leaf-glories and bark-glories,
Flower-glories
and glories that lurk
in the grasses of the field . . . .
Glories of mountains and oceans,
of little streams of running waters
Glories of song
of poesy,
of all the arts. . .

May be to you as sweet
abiding influences
That will illumine your life
and make you glad.

That your soul may be
as an alabaster cup
Filled to overflowing
With the mystical wine
of beauty and love.

That happiness may
put her arms around you,
And wisdom make
your soul serene.

This is my wish for you.

By Charles Livingston Snell (1914)

 You are a light. You are the light. Never let anyone—any person or any force—dampen, dim or diminish your light. Study the path of others to make your way easier and more abundant. Lean toward the whispers of your own heart, discover the universal truth, and follow its dictates. […] Release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge. Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won. Choose confrontation wisely, but when it is your time don't be afraid to stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice. And if you follow your truth down the road to peace and the affirmation of love, if you shine like a beacon for all to see, then the poetry of all the great dreamers and philosophers is yours to manifest in a nation, a world community, and a Beloved Community that is finally at peace with itself.
― John Lewis

 

Okakura Kakuzo: "Let us have a sip of tea. The 
afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling 
with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream 
of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things."

 

“The purest and most thoughtful minds

 are those which love color the most.”

― John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

Faith is better understood as a verb than a noun,
 as a process than a possession.
 It is an on-again, off-again rather than once-and-for-all.
Faith is not sure where you’re going, but going anyway.
— Frederick Buechner

Invitation

 Oh do you have time

to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude –
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

Mary Oliver, “Invitation,” A Thousand Mornings (New York: Penguin Books, 2013).

The Word

“You can say anything you want, yessir, but it’s the words that sing, they soar and descend…I bow to them…I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down…I love words so much…the unexpected ones…the ones I wait for greedily or stalk, until suddenly, they drop…Vowels I love…they glitter like colored stones, they leap like silver fish, they are foam, thread, metal, dew…I run after certain words…They are so beautiful that I want to fit them all into my poem…I catch them in mid flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them.  I set myself in front of the dish.  They have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, oil, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives…and then I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them, I let them go…I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves…Everything exists in the word…”

          by Pablo Neruda

Just Thinking

Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile. Some dove somewhere.

Been on probation most of my life. And
the rest of my life been condemned. So these moments
count for a lot--peace, you know.

Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans. Just being there.

This is what the whole thing is about. 

by William Stafford

Pandemic

In the beginning,
when we all stayed in,
the birds came to sing to us,
now that the drone of traffic and jets
all silenced.
The earth gave a great sigh of relief
as the air cleared
and the mountains reappeared.
And in our time of pausing,
great beauty was revealed
to give us solace,
as we waited
for our world
to come
to an end.

Starfish

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to 
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a 
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have 
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman 
down beside you at the counter who say, Last night, 
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological 
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old 
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it 
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the 
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you 
were born at a good time. Because you were able 
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And 
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland, 
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel, 
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

Eleanor Lerman 

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
 and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. 
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”
 ~ Kahlil Gibran