What matters is not so much the end we reach as our manner of reaching it. Truth is various; truth comes to us in different disguises; it is not with the intellect alone that we perceive it. Truth is to be pursued with all our faculties. Are we to rule out the amusements, the tendernesses, the frivolities of friendship because we love truth? Will truth be quicker found because we stop our ears to music and drink no wine, and sleep instead of talking through the long winter’s night? It is not to the cloistered disciplinarian mortifying himself in solitude that we are to turn, but to the well-sunned nature, the man who practices the art of living to the best advantage, so that nothing is stunted but some things are permanently more valuable than others.

~Virginia Woolf

how fine the truth can be…

inquiry for today~ and what are you searching for?

can I be deeper in the living?

The city trembled at the wolf
outside its gates, fangs 
fierce, howling with hunger, 
fur thick with blood.
 
Francis approaches softly,
palms open. When the wolf lunges  
his breath stays slow and steady,
looks with eyes of love,
 
smiles and bows
and the beast whimpers,
licks the monk’s salty face,
tail a brown banner waving,
 
and follows Francis
through the streets
like an old friend,
to the wonder of all.
 
Except perhaps it’s not
such a wonder that 
when we open the gate
to all that is fierce 
 
and fearful inside us, 
when we hold our hands
like begging bowls,
our hearts like candles,
 
the wolf within will want
to lay its soft head 
upon our laps and we see
there is no more wolf and me
 
just one wild love,
one wild hunger.

~Christine Valters Paintner