Books, Fabric & Yarn purchased in 2011

Random Quotes

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”  
   ― Charlotte BrontëJane Eyre

“All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes -- characters even -- caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.” 
   ― Diane SetterfieldThe Thirteenth Tale

I AM ME

In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me
Everything that comes out of me is authentically me
Because I alone chose it
I own everything about me
My body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions,
Whether they be to others or to myself

I own my fantasies,
My dreams, my hopes, my fears
I own all my triumphs and
Successes, all my failures and mistakes
Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me
by so doing
I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts
I know
There are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other
Aspects that I do not know
but as long as I am
Friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously
And hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles
And for ways to find out more about me

However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever
I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically
Me
If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought
And felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is
Unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that
Which I discarded
I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do
I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be
Productive to make sense and order out of the world of
People and things outside of me
I own me, and
therefore I can engineer me
I am me and

I AM OKAY
    ~ Poem by Virginia Satir




I am ninety.  Or ninety-three.  One or the other.

When you're five, you know your age down to the month.  Even in your twenties you know how old you are.  I'm twenty-three, you say, or maybe twenty-seven.  But then in your thirties something strange starts to happen.  It's a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation.  How old are you?  Oh, I'm -- you start confidently, but then you stop.  You were going to say thirty-three, but you're not.  You're thirty-five.  And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end.  It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it.
                                                           From Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen


Anything we want to develop in ourselves, whether a physical skill, a mental shift, or a creative passion begins with saying yes. After that yes comes practice. Practice is what gets you where you want to go. Practice is the art of repeatedly engaging in an activity to develop a skill.

It takes effort and commitment and energy and self-discipline. Practice is often, especially in the beginning, doing something we don't really know how in order to learn. It's how we improve and how we come to find and develop our own gifts.
                                                   From Ali Edwards newsletter - early January 2012


 Every
Child
Has known God,
Not the God of names,
Nor the God of don’ts,
Nor the God who never does
Anything weird,
But the God who knows only four words
And keeps repeating them, saying:
“Come dance with Me.”
Come
Dance.
                                                                ~Sufi poem by Hafiz

   "It was always something with Peter, who was as spiritual a man as I had ever known.  The nature of his spirituality was personal and idiosyncratic and as times plain weird, but Peter's determined sense was that there was a higher energy at work, a deity, at least in-the-making, somewhere in the universe.  He talked about his spiritual beliefs constantly, as other people might speak about politics, or sports, or the weather.  'If there is actually a God -- a single God,' he'd told me one spring while we were working manure into his wife's vegetable garden, 'I think we're talking about an adolescent.  It's got to be a kid-God who's trying to take care of this planet.  Face it, there's just too many fuckups for this to be a full-grown Supreme Being with four hundred million years of experience.  I mean, losing the dinosaurs, for instance -- can you imagine a God who's actually paying attention allowing that to happen?  Sorry, no way
     "'This planet is being run like it's something somebody's doing on the side, when what they're really interested in is the celestial equivalent of getting laid or starting a rock-and-roll band.'"
                                       From Harm's Way by Stephen White

     " The Jackson Hole Airport is in Grand Teton Nation Park, the only commercial airfield in any of the nation's park preserves.  But the Grand Tetons -- literally, in French slang, the big tits -- are anything but soft and round and inviting.  If these peaks are indeed mammaries, these aren't the round, welcoming brests of male fantasy, these mountains are young and hard and jagged and scream for caution.  These are Madonna's on-tour breasts, granite-coned and forbidding."
                                        From Harm's Way by Stephen White


The Invitation
It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

   ~Oriah 

No comments:

Post a Comment