That’s how we get.  Not by asking, but by offering.*
Seth Godin

There is in the universe a higher kind of beauty.  It is the beauty of sacrifice or giving up for others, or suffering for others.**
Frank Laubach

*Seth Godin’s blog: The generous ask;
**Frank Laubach’s Letters By a Modern Mystic.

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 attention to life, which is why you are here.*
Anne Lamott

One word follows another,
Sentences queue into lines of meaning,
Lines stacking themselves into
verses or
paragraphs, even
• bullet-points,
Organising in ways the words
resist in our thoughts.**

When we write,^
We are endless,
Not in some fictional way, but
transcendentally:
We can find our
humility, gratitude, faithfulness:
Who we are,
What we have,
What we can do,
And previously unimagined
possibilities tender themselves
to our day.

*Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything.
**Check out Seth Godin’s blog Time well spent, as an example of stacking words;
^Here are some resources: Austin Kleon’s journaling blogs, Julia Cameron’s morning pages, Ryder Carroll’s The Bullet Journal Method, commonplace book-writing.

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 rushed through.*
John O’Donohue

what you’re desperate for is not the time to do it; it’s the energy to do it**
Katherine Morgan Schafler

My predilection is towards
slow and energy, but I wondered what might be observable if
I set these as one end of x and y axes:
It happens that I found myself active in each of the quadrants,
Though perhaps the quantity or quality were off –
Something for me to work on.

How about you?^

*John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For One Who Is Exhausted;
**Katherine Morgan Schafler’s The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control;
^Some helpful questions?: Am I successful at this? Does it help someone else? Am I being intuitive? Am I recovering energy? Do I grow as a result of this? Is it meeting a need in me? Am I always meeting someone else’s needs … or demands? Do I waste time? Do I always do as much as possible … or as little? Do I “crash” a lot? Do I notice more than others? Am I always doing the same thing? Have I always got a reason for not spending time on something different? Do I struggle to be? Do I struggle to do? Do I play it safe? When was the last time I explored? Do I struggle with the unfamiliar? Am I open to awe? Do I aim to be with people who are like me or different to me? Am I comfortable or uncomfortable being alone? Am I comfortable or uncomfortable being with others?

It’s a grand thing to get leave to live.*
Nan Shepherd

To be human means not only to be different, but also to become different, that is, to change.**
Viktor Frankl

That you are here is the biggest break of all –
The odds against this were incalcucable, and yet
here you are;
Any further breaks are small in comparison to this, but,
More importantly, the next thing to figure out is
how to keep changing, growing, moving,
Something you must do in your own incomparable way.

*Philip Newell’s Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul;
**Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul.

When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us.  The rushed heart and the arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.*
John O’Donohue

*John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty.

the only essential is this: the gift must always move*
Lewis Hyde

Dazzling and tremendous, how quickly the sunrise would kill me, if I could not, now and always, send sunrise out of me.*
Walt Whitman

Some believe there can be no such thing as
an unconditional gift –
The giving provoking some kind of repayment – but
this is and isn’t true:
It is true inasmuch as a gift does prompt us to become a giver
(and then the gift changes, anyway),
It isn’t true insomuch as the gift is not to be repaid,
But paid forward –
It is always moving away from the original giver.**

*Lewis Hyde’s The Gift;
**The gift comprises the gift itself, the spirit of the gift, and the community of the gift. Whilst the gift may be “consumed”, the spirit and community continue. These comprise the story of the gift. Once a gift moves outside of the community of the gift then it becomes a commodity.

Hope is:
1. a clear and specific goal
2. agency thinking.  Belief you have control over what you do, that your actions matter, and that you can impact the results in your life.
3. pathway thinking.  You see a path, have a path, or can create multiple paths from where you are now to your goal.*

It’s a shift from wish-based optimism to reality-based hope.**
Krista Tippett

Erich Fromm^ labels hope the mood of faith –
Faith takes issue with the present reality, foresees a different possibility, and
takes responsibility for bringing it to birth, on the smallest of scales first of all,
Each day, somewhere, for someone.

What do you hope for?

*Ben Hardy’s Be Your Future Self Now;
**Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise;
^Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope.

To live well and prosper, first know your natural bent, your star, your genius, and the place suitable to these; there live. Follow your natural profession.*
Marsilio Ficino

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.**
Hospice patients

The way to lean,
The direction to travel,
The impact to bring,
The audience to serve –
These are present to you right now;
Don’t be duped by the
unnatural professions.^

*Anna Katharina Schaffner’s The Art of Self Development;
**Daniel Pink’s The Power of Regret; collected by hospice nurse Bronnie Ware;
^It is possible, and more likely that we will, bring more of our natural profession to work in the unnatural, though it is greater than the unnatural in the same way the infinite game is greater than the finite.

Do few things but do them well
heartfelt work grows purely
If you want to live life well
Take your time, go slowly*
Donovan Leitch

A brand is not a logo … .**
Seth Godin

When it comes to your unique and irreplaceable life, nothing changes
in the blink of an eye, a decision, like a logo, may be made
in an instant, the reality of it is shaped over a journey, or even a lifetime,
And it is wonderful.

*The Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer;
**Seth Godin’s This is Strategy.

Our hope lies not primarily in human reason and scientific analysis, but in the nuanced regions of intuition and human imagination within us.*
Philip Newell

‘Finding your passion’ can often become a distraction from simply being passionate … And if you really think you’re not passionate … act like it anyway. It beats the alternative.**
Gabe Anderson

Passion is a more thrilling word than
responsibility, but
they’re one and the same thing, and
they are also synonymous with your gift;
It’s not out there, it’s already
within you, and you only need let it
sing.

*Philip Newell’s Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul;
**Gabe Anderson’s blog: A Word About Passion.