“When it’s over I want to say: all my life, I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.” – When Death Comes by Mary Oliver.
Category Archives: Comforting Thought
Comforting Thought: How to take a spiritual detox from damaging media messages
When we constantly hear that we should be smart, better connected, more productive, wealthier – you name it – it takes real courage to claim the time and space to follow the currents of our talents, our aspirations and our hearts, which may lead in a very different direction.
Comforting Thought: The interconnectedness of all living things
Everything in its right place One feels keenly the sense of interconnectedness of all living things: a sense of everything being in its right place. This is biology as teleology, rainforest as pocketwatch fallen open on the path- but instead of the hand of God crafting its workings, coevolution is the force by which theContinue reading “Comforting Thought: The interconnectedness of all living things”
Comforting Thought: Real love allows for failure
Real love allows for failure and suffering. All of us have made mistakes, and some of those mistakes were consequential, but you can find a way to relate to them with kindness. No matter what troubles have befallen you or what difficulties you have caused yourself or others, with love for yourself you can change, grow, make amends and learn. Real love is not about letting yourself off the hook. Real love does not encourage you to ignore your problems or deny your mistakes and imperfections, You see them clearly and you still opt for love.
Comforting Thought: Don’t resist or block off your feelings
Real love for ourselves, by definition includes every aspect of our lives – the good, the bad, the difficult, the challenging past. the uncertain future as well as all of the shameful, upsetting experiences and encounters that we’d just as soon as forget.
This doesn’t mean that we have to celebrate everything that’s happened to us or write thank you notes to people who have hurt us. But, like it or not, the emotional residue of our experiences is part of who we are.
Comforting Thought: The Summer’s Day by Mary Oliver
“Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” -The Summer Day by Mary Oliver.
Powerful Thought: The dead bird urges you to write
Rachel Carson was urged to write ‘Silent Spring’ by the dead birds she held in her hands who called her to write.
She could not live, knowing what she had learned about DDT, without speaking, without – her gift – lifting her pen to write.
Comforting Thought: Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miled through the desert, repenting, you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” – Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
Comforting Thought: Your body is not just mineral and elemental. No, it’s vividly alive
Your body isn’t just mineral and elemental. No, it’s vividly alive, as anyone knows who’s ever danced, had a sore throat, made love or stubbed a toe.
All of the baroque variety of life on earth is considered to come from a tiny common ancestor who appeared about 4 billion years ago.
Still today, on a cellular level, basic functions like respiration look similar in plants and animals. So does your DNA -we humans share about half of our genetic material with plants. We truly aren’t very far away from anything.
Comforting Thought: Eccentricity
“To live rooted on a changing earth is to create a new story. There are so few voices left that speak for wild nature first. It’s time to clasp hands (paws, fins, feathers, branches) and know where we stand.” Lyanda Lynn Haupt
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