The way of love is not a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.
Birds make great sky circles
Of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall
And in falling they're given wings.
-Rumi

“One of the greatest disciplines of existence, especially as we grow older, is the discipline of innocence and of keeping the sense of wonder and enlargement and surprise alive in your own heart. And the moment that you stop, in a sense, living from your innocence is the moment where you start to feel besieged by existence and the moment you need defences and walls. And no matter how high you build these walls, the encroaching sea of existence will actually scour them away. And you will somehow be revealed. But because you lived in exile from what is innocent and real about yourself, what frightens you most in life is your own happiness. I think one of the most difficult things in life is claiming your own happiness."
~ David Whyte, from a presentation on The Creative Imperative with Jerry Wennstrom ~

“Everything is changing and connected. And our call is to enter a dance with the things and forces of the world, not just deflecting what comes at us. For often, the things we need to learn are in the spaces in between.”
-Mark Nepo

". . . from the stars and the sun and the moon should man learn."

--Eagle Chief (Letakots-Lesa) 20th-century Native American (Pawnee) leader

"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."

--Alice Walker from the Color Purple

"Beyond right and wrong doing there is a green field I'll meet you there! When you lie down in that grass Life is too full to talk about."

--Rumi

"We are part of a circle. When we paint, when we weave, when we write, when we give birth, when we organise, when we heal, when we run through the park, while the redwoods sweat mist, when we do what we were afraid to do, we are not separate. We are of the world and of each other, and the power within us is a great, if not invincible, power. Though we can be hurt, we can heal, though each one of us can be destroyed, within us is the power of renewal."

--Starhawk

"Come out of your warm, angular house, resounding with few voices, into the chill, grand, instantaneous night, with such a Presence as a full moon in the clouds, and you are struck with poetic wonder."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) American writer and poet

"We are cups constantly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."

--Ray Bradbury

"Notice how each particle moves, notice how everyone has arrived here from a journey, notice how each wants a different food and how each stream streams toward the ocean."

--Rumi

"How surely gravity's law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of even the smallest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world. Each thing--- each stone, blossom, child--- is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we each belong to for some empty freedom. If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees... This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly."

--Rainer Maria Rilke, Love Poems to God