Nimbostratus are thick, grey, featureless layers of cloud that cause prolonged, continuous, often heavy, rain, snow, or ice pellets. … Nimbostratus are the deepest of all the layer clouds – sometimes extending from 2,000ft up to around 18,000ft – and generally extend over many thousands of square miles.*
Gavin Pretor-Pinney

The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.**

If you’re in Edinburgh today, this is likely to be the cloud you were looking up at in the morning.^ It’s an astonishing thing when you think about it: thousands of tons of water hanging in the air, falling on us in a way that will not (directly) harm us.

I always try to have a book open on the natural environment. Following reading Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees, I’m exploring the skies.

*From Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s The Cloudspotter’s Guide;
**Psalm 19:1-3;
^As I complete this for posting, it’s the afternoon and the cloud has broken up and has texture, so becoming another form of cloud, perhaps altocumulus.

Real relationships must be built and renewed through repeated cycles of rupture and repair. … We are unique. Yet we become our unique selves only in relationship with others.*
David Rome

Slow relationships give deep relationships a chance; we know fast can’t do that.

And thirty years of shallow is still shallow, but to be willing to explore, going unfamiliar and stretching, and giving space to recover and reflect, leads us into worlds of human relating that we are only on the edges of.

*From David Rome’s Your Body Knows the Answer.

Are situations that seem to have no satisfactory solution challenging me to grow, to change, to become more than I have been – stronger, gentler, more responsible, more loving? Are they inviting me, perhaps, to come alive in a whole new way?*
David Rome

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die …**
The Teacher

I thought it would last forever.

I really believed I could find a solution.

I wanted the future but I didn’t want to let go of the past.

Maybe if I try just one more time.

But I’ve invested so much.

The future is so unclear.

Quietly, gently, insistently, a beginning may be calling, a walking towards that is also a leaving.

*From David Rome’s Your Body Knows the Answer;
**Ecclesiastes 3:1-2a.

For the listener who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.*
Wallace Stevens

The question then is how to get lost. Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction, and somehow in the terra incognito in between lies a life of discovery.**
Rebecca Solnit

Oldness and lostness: two themes stumbled upon this morning.

As I grow older I know I am slowing down in a number of ways but I am also slowing down intentionally.

To slow down and notice more allows me to become lost in the familiar places.

The human being knows herself only insofar as she knows the world; she perceives the world only in herself and herself only in the world. Every new object clearly seen, opens up a new organ of perception.^

*From Wallace Stevens‘ The Snow Man, quoted in David Rome’s Your Body Knows the Answer;
**From Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost;
^Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quoted in Your Body Knows the Answer: italics mine offering more gender balance.

Do not leave it or course over it, as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength.*
Annie Dillard

Before a human being thinks of others, he must have been unapologetically himself; he must have taken the measure of his nature in order to master it and empty it for the benefit of others like himself.**
Rainer Maria Rilke

Part of what it is for me to be alive is to appreciate who I am and what I have. This is what I have spent the last twenty five or more years figuring out so I might make this available to others.

This opportunity to write and doodle every day for the past eight years is an attempt to write myself to a deeper place of understanding.

It’s not about what I find on the surface of my life, but what I am happily surprised to discover deep down. This is more a comment on the lives of those I wander in work with, discoverers of the wonder of their capacity:

Focus on circumstances and you’ll be a consumer. Focus on capacity and you’ll be a creator.^

*Annie Dillard, quoted in David Rose’s Your Body Knows the Answer;
**From Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life;
^Kade Janes, quoted in gapingvoid‘s blog: We all know gratitude is the mother of all virtue. Here’s why.

You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.*

Trust is worth more than attention, and the purpose of the work is to create meaningful change, not to be on a list.**
Seth Godin

There’s a staggering amount of truth around. The most important truth has a long shelf-life, some truth has been hanging around for billions of years, and some human truth for many thousands of years.

There’s more truth being made every day and you’ll be making some of that, as, I hope, so will I.

I am thinking of the most important expressions of truth found in love and joy and peace and patience and goodness and kindness and love and beauty and relationship … .

For these truths we search and explore, reading and talking and imagining and collaborating and then bringing into being something we might give to make the world better.

*Psalm 51.6
**From Seth Godin’s blog: Superfamous.

Always have the courage
To change, welcoming those voices
That call you beyond yourself.*
John O’Donohue

Life is a single, integrated process that generates both the living thing and its environment.**
David Rome

Here’re alternative quotes for beginning today:

In a word: one ought to turn the most extreme possibility inside oneself into the measure for one’s life, for our life is vast and can accommodate as much future as we are able to carry.^
Rainer Maria Rilke

Life is the on going process of self-making. It is that which continuously changes itself in order to continue being itself.**
David Rome

Or perhaps these:

Designing story tests the maturity and insight of the writer, his knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart. It demands both vivid imagination and powerful analytical thought. Above all, it requires a mastery of craft.^^
Robert McKee

When we invest in conversation, we get a pay-off in self-knowledge, empathy, and the experience of community.  When we move from conversation to mere connection, we get a lot of unintended consequences.
Sherry Turkle

We are capable of many possible futures. Indeed, many of these will be necessary for us to be who we are.

These possibilities will not take on shape and form without environments, and these are not pre-existing, but grow together with us.

The most important environments are those formed with others.

May you find someone today with whom you can talk up a possibility or dream.

*From John O’Donohue’s Benedictus;
**From David Rome’s Your Body Knows the Answer;
^From Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letter on Life;
^^From Robert McKee‘s newsletter: Why Writers Study;
*^From Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation.

If there were no problems it wouldn’t be much fun.*
Alan Lightman

It is, therefore, this fluidity that presents us with an unavoidable challenge: how to contain the serious within the truly playful; that is, to keep all our finite games in infinite play.**
James Carse

Problems can chase us into the protection of the known and familiar.

To discover whether a problem could become a possibility greater than a fix, we may need to set out for the open ground of the unknown and unfamiliar through the playfulness of our imaginations, an adventure we are more than capable of.

*From Alan Lightman’s A Sense of the Mysterious;
**From James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games.

Make interesting, amazing, glorious mistakes. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art.*
Neil Gaiman

You’re doing it wrong. But at least you’re doing it. Once you’re doing it, you have a chance to do it better. Waiting for perfect means not starting.**
Seth Godin

I find myself reading Neil Gaiman’s words two ways, or two ways in one.

Through my “art” to leave the world a better place.

Through my art to become a better person.

The two possibilities accompany one another.

Stop for a moment, prepare yourself with the GAP exercise, and then ask yourself the question:

What is my art?

Listen carefully for what your life speaks to you.

Not the first thoughts words or pictures that come, but what lies beneath these.

Wishes are the memories coming from our future.^

*From Neil Gaiman’s Art Matters;
**From Seth Godin’s blog: “You’re doing it wrong”;
^From Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life.

We are a mystery wrapped in a question.*
Alex McManus

We can be tempted to think that life is about finding answers, but what if the quality of the answer depends on the quality the question?

*From Alex McManus’ Makers of Fire.