Saturday ~ February 13, 2016

If I were much wiser, and much more patient, and had much greater concentration, I could sit in silence in my chair, look out my windows at a green tree and the blue sky, and know that breathing is a gift; that a breath is sufficient for the moment; and that breathing air is breathing God.

( Andre Dubus, 1936 - 1999 )

Thursday ~ February 11, 2016

I think perfection is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.

(Anne Lamont, b. 1954)

Tuesday ~ February 9, 2016

There is a thing of me that dreamed of trees
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company,
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere...
I would that it were not so, but so it is.
Who ever made music of a mild day?

(Mary Oliver, 1935 -   )

Monday ~ February 8, 2016

Still, for Jesus' sake, do me a favor, would you,just this once?
Prophesy, give scandal, cast the stone.
Two sides to every question, yes, yes, yes...
But every now and then, just weighing in
 Is what it must come down to,
And without any self exculpation or self pity.

(Seamus Heaney, 1939 - 2013)

Sunday ~ Ferruary 7, 2016

We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid that it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity.

(Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1906 - 2001)