We live between the edge we look out from

and the edge beyond which we can’t see. What we see as real may expand

when we relax or are illumined and shrink when we are tense or in pain.

But always, an edge to what we know: out there, in here. 

So the real art is: how to listen where we are blind,

how to sense and relate to all that lives beyond our awareness. 

Like a cell in the heart that doesn’t know it is carried by a body,

we float, work hard,

and drift in a sea of life on which we depend.

~Mark Nepo

what is our whole life was grand and intricate like the wisdom teachings?

inquiry for today~ how can your simple life reflect your wise knowing?

through my simple day

It is raining. I look out on the maple, where a few leaves have turned yellow,

and listen to Punch, the parrot, talking to himself and to the rain ticking gently against the windows.

I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my “real” life again at last.

That is what is strange—that friends, even passionate love,

are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore

and to discover what is happening or has happened.

Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening,

this life would become arid.

Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone.

~May Sarton