To stay eager, to connect, to find interest in the everyday, to notice what everybody else overlooks – these are vital skills and noble goals.*
Rob Walker

*Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing.

Play cultivates humility, for it requires us to treat things as they are rather than as we wish them to be.*
Ian Bogost

Play is part of developing trust. Play opens the heart and gives focus and delight, like an abacus did when we were young. Smartphone calculators? Not so much.**
Anne Lamott

We’re in life for the long haul,
Which can sound a little like gritting teeth,
But we have the wherewithal to play through life.
Humility – discovering our developing our
talents and abilities –
And gratitude – noticing and appreciating
our worlds,
Make it possible to play towards the generative qualities of
oneness, enoughness and perseverance.

*Ian Bogost’s Play Anything;
**Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything.

Classically, the understanding of life, the unfolding identity and creativity, the notion of growth and discovery were articulated through the metaphor of the journey.*
John O’Donohue

When we play, we engage fully and intensely with life and its contents. Play bores through boredom in order to reach the deep truth of ordinary things.**
Ian Bogost

May you never be left without a journey to embark upon,
They are all around.

*John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**Ian Bogost’s Play Anything.

Wealth among traditional people is measured by having enough to give away … our word for the giveaway, minidewak, means “they give from the heart” … In the dance of the give-away, remember that the earth is a gift that we must passion on, just as it came to us.*
Robin Wall Kimmerer

That which came as a gift to me,
I am seeking to pass on.
It may look a little different now –
I’ve mixed it and shaped it together with other gifts I’ve received
over the years –
And it’s here for you,
If you wish to receive it.

The starting place for change is accepting oneself and taking an interest in one’s inner world.**

*Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass;
**Edward Deci’s Why We Do What We Do.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.*
Anne Lamott

Breathing in the scent of Mother Earth stimulates the release of the hormone oxytocin, the same chemical that promotes bonding between mother and child, between lovers.. Held in loving arms, no wonder we sing in response.**
Robin Wall Kimmerer

Where are your sanctuaries?
The places you step in to in order just to be – your
nature, walks, silent buildings, writing, painting, god …

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

[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.