A simple note of thankfulness for
forty five years married:*
Thank you, Christine, for loving me,
Thank you for receiving my love,
Thank you, God, for the gift of love.**

*Blue because forty five years is sapphire;
**We’ll be at a family wedding today – which feels a very fitting way to celebrate our anniversary.

Ritual is simply a myth enacted; by participating in a rite, you are participating directly in a myth.*
Joseph Campbell

Learning the skill and caring enough to implement it, again and again, can give us the foundation to see what others might miss.**
Seth Godin

A myth without ritual is
only a story, but when we add rites
it manifests in our ordinary world what we have discovered
in the special world of our explorations;^
These rites will be peculiar to us, our unique take on
and response to the world,
And living them consistently means we’ll find and
make our particular contribution.

*Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss;
**Seth Godin’s blog: In defense of the hard parts;
^As I see it, the time taken to discover and reflect upon our abilities, energies, and values is a special world activity. See more about a myth’s movement from the ordinary world to the special and the return to the ordinary in this short video.

I believe a KID WHO IS PLAYING IS NOT ALONE. THERE IS SOMETHING BROUGHT ALIVE DURING PLAY AND THIS SOMETHING, WHEN PLAYED WITH, SEEMS TO PLAY BACK.*
Lynda Barry

Recovery from trauma involves the restoration of executive functioning and, with it, self-confidence and the capacity for playfulness and creativity.**
Bessel van der Kolk

May you become lost in play –
May you discover that times for play surround us,
May they help you to become wholly you and
me, wholly me.

*Lynda Barry’s What It Is;
**Bessel Van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score.

When we study the self … it disappears.
Dogen Zenji

Your bliss can guide you to that transcendent mystery, because bliss is the welling up of the energy of the transcendent wisdom within you.*
Joseph Campbell

You’d think that studying the self takes
you more into yourself, but,
If we are prepared to avoid the shallows and
go deep, what we discover is our bliss^ –
The difference we want to make for others,
The contribution we desire to bring into the world, that
changes us through its unfolding expression.

*Lewis Hyde’s A Primer For Forgetting;
**Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss;
^Bliss for Joseph Campbell refers to the deep sense of joy and purpose eliciting from embracing our true self and calling.

Now it is a basic mythological principle, I would say, that what is referred to in mythology as “the outer world” is really (in psychological terms) “the inner world.” And what is spoken of as “future” is “now.”*
Joseph Campbell

It is far better for us to return to our own unique and soulful cycles regularly, all of them, any of them.**
Clarissa Pinkola Estés

The future is inside you
waiting to be found
within your reset time –
Whenever and wherever and however
you enter this.^

*Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss;
**Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With the Wolves;
^Mine is at the beginning of the day.

Let us begin to learn how to bless each other. Whenever you give a blessing, a blessing returns to enfold you.*
John O’Donohue

We may wonder,
Who are we to bless another, what have we to give?

This is part of the fun – when we bless another
from the centre of our being, something more opens up within us, too.

There is no forcing or compelling, only an invitation,
An invocation that holds the possibility of transformation.

*John O’Donohue’s Benedictus.

So the psychological problem, the way to keep from becoming blocked, is to make yourself – and here is the phrase – transparent to the transcendent. It is as easy as that.*
Joseph Campbell

A fascinating paradox is that most transcendent experiences are completely ego-free.  In the moment, we lose track of our bodies, we lose track of our selves.**
Alan Lightman

“This wasn’t what I expected” –
Thank goodness:
The transcendent is all around us,
In nature, in another, in ideas and artefacts, in god;
Hanging around longer than others are willing to,
Looking longer and deeper,
Being silent and open, are all good skills to hone;
Towards this, when blocked,
Why not read or listen, take a walk or be still,
Not to try to unblock you, but to be otherly.

*Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss;
**Alan Lightman’s The Transcendent Brain (w).

We are not made wise by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for the future.*
George Bernard Shaw

TO FOLLOW A WANDERING MIND means having to get lost. CAN YOU STAND BEING LOST?**
Lynda Barry

Our pasts have brought us here, but
now what? –
What must we each do that no one else will,
Or can, and
we will be the poorer without?

*Seth Godin’s The Carbon Almanac;
**Lynda Barry’s What It Is.

We’re all haunted by something deep inside of us, and often a lot of our best work is the result of trying to come to terms with this.*
gapingvoid

It’s our interpretation of, and approach to, our past that generates resilience … “Do not become a victim of your past.**
Vitor Strecher and Henry Nyombi

The past is never past – because of
how it records itself within us,
We know it is here in the present and is
capable of shaping the future;
How we live with it, then,
Is everything, as Brother Nassim would remind us,
It is not only possible to grow ourselves beyond being
reactive to our past – overcome by it,
Even more than being resilient to it –
more than bouncing back, we are capable
of using the past to be more, become stronger:
Wind extinguishes a candle and energises fire …
You want to be the fire and wish for the wind.^

*gapingvoid’s blog: Spiritual Redemption;
**Victor Strecher’s Life on Purpose (230), quoting Henry Nyombi;
^Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile (3).

Our lifetimes are specks in the universe, but they are the longest and only spans of time we will ever know.*
Beth Pickens

As Rilke says: Hier zu sein ist soviel – to be here is immense.**
John O’Donohue

It’s quite astonishing what we can do
with a little bit of time:
May we be playful with what we have,
Not regretting that we haven’t got more.

The point is to master the habit of showing up.^

*Beth Pickens’ Make Your Art No Matter What (6);
**John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us (186);
^James Clear’s Atomic Habits (163).