Humility is the most important meal of the day.

In other words, man should only play with beauty, and he should play only with beauty.*

*From Friedrich Schiller’s On the Aesthetic Education of Man. 

I have different walks for different questions or problems or ideas that I’m dealing with, a whole chain of maybe fifty different walks that I do for different things. 
Iain Sinclair

I can only meditate when I am walking.  When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs. 
(Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

I’m taking a few days out for grandparenting fun and games, but there’ll be a doodle here each day.

You can’t ever be sure the future will go the way you want. But you can usually (if admittedly not always) be sure that when it fails to go the way you want, you’ll have the wherewithal to cope.*
Oliver Burkeman

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 you are here.**
Anne Lamott

I do not hold with the doctrine of original sin, but something strange does happen to us because of consciousness and trauma.

Life can become messy, ugly even, and smaller.

Yet, it can also be transcendent and our wherewithal can make all the difference, à la Frederick Buechner’s assertion that we find our purpose where our deepest gladness meets the world’s greatest need.

Our wherewithal forms our seeing:

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.^

Today’s convergence of texts caused me to think of what ca happen in dreamwhispering: how people can find their wherewithal. That is, their values, talents and energies with which help them to see a larger llife.

*Oliver Burkeman, quoted in Sam Radford’s blog: The wherewithal to cope;
**From Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything;
^From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty.

Peace of mind is an inside job, unrelated to fame, fortune, or whether you partner loves you.*
Anne Lamott

Creativity isn’t learning the right answers but asking the strongest questions.**
Robert McKee

It’s tempting to think of peace as the absence of conflict and turmoil, but I’m more interested in the kind of peace that keeps me in the journey:

We are hardwired with curiosity inside us, because life knew that this would keep us going even in bad sailing.*

There’s a peace that makes it possible for me to speak to new people, to change my mind, to try new things. It isn’t a peace we wait upon, but we are able to grow , better even than Harry Potter’s liquid luck. It’s about creating a better narrative for the contents of our lives:

If you’ve gone through gathering and aggregating ideas this is the point at which you’ll probably confront the same problem I do every year: there are too many possibilities.^

For me, it begins with my journaling and reading at the beginning of each day. How do you grow your peace for possibility?

*From Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything;
**From Robert McKee‘s newsletter: What to Do When You Doubt Your Dialogue;
^From Rohit Bhargava’s Non Obvious 2019.

The mind can be a noisy and cluttered place that can drown out the heart.*
Susan Friel

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

The wind is blowing furiously.

Storm Dudley is on its way.

Already the winds are high, the clouds are scurrying, the trees beginning to bend.

My thoughts feel sluggish this morning. I need this wind to blow through me, uncovering my heart as it progresses.

*Susan Friel, quoted in Corita Kent and Jan Steward’s Learning by Heart;
**From John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For One Who is Exhausted.

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

Some people get one. Most people don’t. But, if you’re reading this, it means that you’ve received more than one, perhaps a countless number of, little breaks.**
Seth Godin

We’ve all had at least one big break.

Now it’s up to us to put in some effort and to accept the help of others whenever possible and yet keep moving when we’re on our own:

Nobody’s gonna give you permission. Nobody’s gonna welcome you into the club. Nobody’s gonna pat you on the back and say “well done.”  All you can do is keep making the work you want to see in the world.^

*Nan Shepherd, quoted in Philip Newell’s Sacred Earth Sacred Soul;
**From Seth Godin’s blog: Your big break;
^From Austin Kleon’s blog: Validation is for parking.

If I always seek to pattern my life after another, mine is being wasted re-doing things for my own empty acceptance. But, if I live my life my way and only let the other [artists] influence me as a reference, a starting point, I can build an even higher awareness instead of staying dormant.*
Keith Haring

In the Celtic World from the earliest centuries, speech was viewed as our greatest strength, greater than any physical force. True words hold a mighty energy for change.**
Philip Newell

Our truest words
don’t just come from
anywhere;
they thrill forth from
humility,
accepting the wonder
of our life as
it is and as it
may become.

*From Keith Haring’s Keith Haring Journals;
**From Philip Newell’s Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul.

Much of the stress and emptiness that haunts us can be traced back to our lack of attention to beauty. Internally, the mind becomes course and dull if it remains unvisited by images and thoughts which hold the radiance of beauty.*
John O’Donohue

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

Input beauty.

Imagine.

Innovate.

Output beauty.

*From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**From Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.