I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination — What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth — whether it existed before or not — for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty.   ~John Keats

winter light reminds us to settle a little more deeply into our true nature….into the warm and untidy calling of gray time……to comfort others and ourselves as best as we can…….

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it nothing fancy.

But it seems impossible.

Whatever the subject, the morning sun

glimmers it.

The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open

and becomes a star.

The ants bore into the peony bud and there is the dark

pinprick well of sweetness.

As for the stones on the beach, forget it.

Each one could be set in gold.

So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds were singing.

And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music

out of their leaves.

And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and beautiful silence

as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too

hurried to heart it.

As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs

even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.

So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.

So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,

and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,

so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being

locked up in gold.

~Mary Oliver

grace and desire

We each are an individual fragment of a collective soul and are called to help each other, to live with a compassionate awareness of all of humanity. Yet if giving and receiving were simple, people would not suffer each anxiety, guilt, and worry over these acts. Our task is to infuse our action with all our faith and belief in its goodness and release it into the universe to do its invisible work. Birthing the self is an archetypal struggle that awaits every individual. We must go it alone on our own hero’s journey to discover our individual spiritual resources.  ~Carolyn Myss