[T]here is a fire you must tend to every day. The hardest one to take care of is the one right here. Your own fire, your spirit. We all carry a piece of that sacred fire within us. We have to honour it and care for it. You are the firekeeper.
Robert Wall

I have learned to be content with whatever I have.  I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.**
The Apostle Paul

It is possible to forget the secret, to forget
how to live gratefully, so I will have to keep
writing it out:
If you stick with writing,
you will get better and better,
and you can start to learn the important lessons:
who you really are,
and how all of us can live in the face of death,
and how important it is to pay much better attention to life,
which is why we are here.^
We each are capable of creating a beautiful story,
Forged through humility, gratitude and faithfulness
A story that will help us see differently:
Both the gaze that sees and the
object that is seen
construct themselves in the one act of vision.
So much depends on how we see things.^^
I suspect we will find that life-in-all-its-fullness will open to us,
no matter what:
Be joyful though you have considered
all the facts.*^

*Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass;
**Philippians 4:11-12;
^Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything;
^^John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
*^Wendell Berry; Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything.