Bite-sized comfort and spirituality in a turmultuous world
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36 Questions for Creating Closeness
At many times in my #life I’ve felt like I was alone and this made me feel extremely sad and lost. However in contrast, the really best times of my life have been where I’ve bridged that gap and managed to develop a genuine and real #connection with someone and formed a meaningful #friendship or…
Comforting Thought: The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the…
Comforting Thought: Getting Real, the Velveteen Rabbit
“Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.” — Marcus Aurelius #quote #stoic #philosophy #soul #life
Comforting Thought: James Baldwin on why art is important
If you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover them too – the terms with which they are connected to other people. This has happened to every one of us, I’m sure. You read something which you thought only…
Comforting Thought: Throw open the windows of your soul
“Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.” — Marcus Aurelius #quote #stoic #philosophy #soul #life
Comforting Thought: Whistling in the dark
“Art would not be important if life were not important. And life is important. Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.” James Baldwin #quote #philosophy #art
Comforting Thought: The Light that Burns Bright
“There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail; there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.”
~ Leo Tolstoy #Tolstoy #writing #books #bookquote #quote #philosophy #hope #healing #psychology #humanity #philosophy
Comforting Thought: Sunrise by Mary Oliver
“I thought how the sun blazes for everyone just so joyfully as it rises under the lashes of my own eyes, and I thought I am so many!” – Sunrise by Mary Oliver
Comforting Thought: Describing versus experiencing places
“Describing something is like using it – it destroys; the colours wear off, the corners lose their definition, and in the end what’s been described begins to fade, to disappear. This applies most of all to places. Enormous damage has been done by travel literature – a veritable scourge, an epidemic. Guidebooks have conclusively ruined…
Comforting Thought The challenge of a life’s time and a lifetime
It may be when we no longer know what to do,
We have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go,
We have begun our real journey.
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) is a poet, farmer, writer and activist.
Do you play in your real life? What does play mean to you?
Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you? It means reading 📚 a lot of books. Dancing around to music. Trying out cocktails or exotic teas with unusual flavours. Swimming in the ocean, I am very fortunate to live right next to the beach and I am grateful for this. Laughing…
Comforting Thought: The Past
“The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it.”
~ Wendell Berry
Comforting Thought: Morning Poem by Mary Oliver
If it is your nature to be happy, you will swim away along the soft trails for hours, your imaginationalighting everywhere.” – Morning Poem by Mary Oliver
Comforting Thought: When Death Comes by Mary Oliver
“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.
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 the…
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,…
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…
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,…
Ancient Fable: St. Francis of Assisi and the injured wolf
13th century Italian saint, St Francis of Assisi never understood earth as being a garden of resources over which we have dominion. Instead, he saw the earth as a mother or a sister who governs us.
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
Comforting Thought: Real love runs on a lower voltage than our culture leads us to believe
When we pay attention to the sensations in our bodies, we can feel that love is the energetic opposite of fear. Love seems to open and expand us right down to the cellular level, while fear causes us to contract and withdraw into ourselves. Yet so often, fear keeps us from being able to say…
Comforting Thought: Wild hearts breed protection of a wild earth
“We enter as pilgrims, as wayfarers knowing there is something we are seeking. Something nameless, beautiful, waiting and wanting.” ~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Comforting Thought: Love is the energetic opposite of fear
When we pay attention to the sensations in our bodies, we can feel that love is the energetic opposite of fear. Love seems to open and expand us right down to the cellular level, while fear causes us to contract and withdraw into ourselves. Yet so often, fear keeps us from being able to say…
Comforting Thought: What natural sound would you preserve forever?
Silence The song of the cicadas Penetrates the rocks In Japanese there are many onomatopoeic words for the sounds in nature. shito shito: the sound of light rain zā zā: the sound of heavy rain kasa kasa: the light sound of leaves rustling under foot hyū hyū: the sound of wind blowing goro goro: the…
Comforting Thought: The Sun by Mary Oliver
“Do you think that there is anywhere, in any language – a word billowing enough – for the pleasure that fills you, as the sun, reaches out and warms you”: The Sun by Mary Oliver
Comforting Thought: Kindness is a muscle we exercise
Kindness is not a fixed trait that we either have or lack, but more like a muscle that can be developed and strengthened. We exercise kindness in any moment where we recognise our shared humanity- with all of the hopes, dreams, joys, dissapointments, vulnerability and suffering that this implies. Such simple but profound awareness levels…
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