Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight,

that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.

It was what I was born for —to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world —

to instruct myself over and over

in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful,

the very extravagant — but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these —

the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?

~Mary Oliver

when nothing is simple quite like the north star….

inquiry for today~ tuck away your sweetest memories….

within the heavens

Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.

~Rumi