Wake up. Day calls you to your life: your duty. Tear your body from the black night and the shadows that covered it, this body for which light waited on tiptoe at dawn. Stand up, affirm the straight, simple will to be perfect, unbent purity. Touch the temple of your body. Is it hot? Cold?…
What would happen if we removed the word ‘anxious’ and just paid attention to these flickering sensations in the belly? What would happen if we took away the concept ‘lonely’ and simply became fascinated with this heavy feeling in the heart area? What would happen if we deleted the labels ‘sick’ or ‘broken’ or ‘bad’…
What if there is no need to change? No need to transform yourself Into someone who is more compassionate, more present, more loving, or wise? How would this affect all the places in your life where you are endlessly trying to be better, or different? What if the task is simply to unfold To become…
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover and every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful will emerge, battered and beautiful When day comes we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid The new dawn blooms as we free it For there is always light, if…
And if I speak of Paradise, then I’m speaking of my grandmother who told me to carry it always on my person, concealed, so no one else would know but me. That way they can’t steal it, she’d say. And if life puts you under pressure, trace its ridges in your pocket, smell its piney…
Breathe, said the wind How can I breathe at a time like this, when the air is full of the smoke of burning tires, burning lives? Just breathe, the wind insisted. Easy for you to say, if the weight of injustice is not wrapped around your throat, cutting off all air. I need you to…
Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow — even today I am still arriving. Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to…
Yes there is fear. Yes there is isolation. Yes there is panic buying. Yes there is sickness. Yes there is even death. But, They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise You can hear the birds again. They say that after just a few weeks of quiet The sky is no longer…
It may be that when we no longer know what to dowe have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to gowe have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. by Wendell Berry…