There is a risk here of supposing that because we know our lives to have the character of a narrative we also know what that narrative is.  If I were to know the full story of my life, I would then have translated it back into explanation.*
James Carse

When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary.**
John O’Donohue

I know what I think it is,
But if I slow down, deeply notice, and
de-label, then it becomes much more, and
my explanation was always barely anything.

*James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games;
**John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty.

“There is fire you must attend to every day. The hardest one to take care of is the one right here,” he says, tapping his finger against his chest. “Your own fire, your spirit. We all carry a piece of the sacred fire within us. We have to honour it and care for it. You are the firekeeper.*
Robin Wall Kimmerer, quoting her father Robert Wall

Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.**
Wendell Berry

We face many difficult things in life,
Thoughts and feelings and circumstances threatening tp
overcome our minds and hearts and souls;
So we learn how to be a firekeeper,
Knowing our fuel,
identifying our oxygen,
Determining our spark –
Who we are, what we have,
The thing we must do.

*Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass;
**Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything.

for we are storymakers, not just storytellers*
Robin Wall Kimmerer

Revelation and evolution hold longform audiences to the screen over years of time. What kills the long-term interest? Repetitiveness and rigidity.**
Robert McKee

Don’t tell the same old story,
Make up some new elements –
Keep yourself interested for the whole odyssey:
And when you fail and fall –
As you will –
Forgive and start over:
The story here is that there is no fix.
To forgive yourselves and others
constantly is necessary.
Not only is everyone screwed up,
but everyone screws up.^

*Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass;
**Robert McKee’s Character;
^Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything.

We remember that because truth is paradox, something beautiful is also going on.*
Anne Lamott

In modernity, mastery usurped mystery.**
Robert Macfarlane

Life isn’t only this,
it’s also that –
Reality is everywhere;
Truth is not only mine,
It’s also yours –
It makes for a very
complicated existence
that we try to rush through, when, really,
We need to insert slowness:
You have travelled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you pushed through.^

You’ve always had all the time
you require, what you need is
energy fed by paradox, beauty and
mystery.

*Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything;
**Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks;
^John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For One Who Is Exhausted;

Woods, like other wild places, can kindle new ways of being pr cognition in people, can urge their minds differently … It is valuable and disturbing to know that oak trees can take three hundred years to grow, three hundred years to live and three hundred years to die. Such knowledge, seriously considered, changes the grain of the mind.*
Robert Macfarlane

Most people don’t know the names of these relatives; in fact, they hardly even see them.  Names are the way we humans build relationships, not only with each other, but with the living world.  I’m trying to imagine what it would be like going through life not knowing the names of plants and animals around you … I think it would be a little scary and disorientating – like being lost in a foreign city where you can’t read the street signs.**
Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Persian King Xerxes, lover of
sycamores, once
halted his army as they marched
to fight with Greece, to contemplate
one might example;
Henry David Thoreau would tramp miles
in all weathers to keep an appointment with
a tree neighbour or friend;
Antoine Saint-Exupéry once flew tribal leaders
from Libya to Senegal who promptly wept
at the sight of trees reaching away from the
airstrip, never having seen
such beings before.

Our longest living, and perhaps
wisest, neighbours are not human –
Before our recent move from Edinburgh,
We would visit some an eight hundred year old oak wood,
Delighting in the presence of these ancient Quercus,
With so many stories to tell, so much pain endured, and yet,
Here they were in leaf and acorn.

Here’s a thought that came to me and that
I’m going to act upon,
And I thought to offer you to try out –
If you wish:
To find a local tree that I can visit and
spend time with throughout the year,
To find out the tree’s name, and
perhaps something of its age, to
listen to its stories, and gratefully accept its
introduction to the neighbourhood.

You may also wish to add the
delightful story of Bertolt –
For children of all ages; the book is a
wonderful tale of a young child and his tree friend –
You may find most of it
in this episode of
Maria Popova’s The Marginalian.

*Robert Macfarlane’s The Wild Places;
**Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.

When in doubt, come back to the stories.**
Chris Guillebeau

The thing you do
Does not hang in space like some
cold commodity;
It comes with a story and a
community that will
guide you when you are
disorientated or languishing or
despairing or doubting –
Whether uncovered yet or not,
They are there, making this day
wonderfully worthwhile.

*Chris Guillebeau’s The Happiness of Pursuit.

What could be better than humour and compassion and the savour of life?  What could be better than that man’s work should become the world’s freedom, and man’s enjoyment the world’s perfecting.*
M. C. Richards

M. C. Richards’ Centering.

These peregrini,as they were also known, viewed their wanderings, or peregrinations, as a process of seeking their places of “resurrection” – they were searching for their path of new beginnings.*
Philip Newell

Those whose hope is strong see and cherish all signs of new life and are ready every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born.**
Erich Fromm

Not all those who wander are
trying to get away from something,
And not knowing what it is that is
being travelled towards doesn’t mean
these roamers are lost in their imaginations;
they are coupling their attention and creativity to a
deep reality missed by others,
Ready to bring to birth the
unlikely and incomprehensible.

*Philip Newell’s Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul;
**Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope.

Brigid challenges us to be people on our knees, that is, people midwifing new births for this moment in time. The good news is that we do not have to create the births. Our role, rather, is to midwife what is trying to come forth from deep within the human soul.*
Philip Newell

The midwife is never heard to say,
“No, no, this will never do!,”
But safely welcomes the newborn, and,
Before this,
Waits –
Two demanding skills we must develop for
this twenty-first century.

*Philip Newell’s Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul.

A god can create a world only by listening.*
James Carse

Pay attention to the world, and train yourself to notice what others miss.**
Rohit Bhargava

What are you listening for? –
Deeper sounds that
are laying down a path for you
to journey to places, through
spaces, others are unaware of,
So you might lead us there.

*James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games;
**Rohit Bhargava’s Non Obvious 2019.