If you’ve never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom. (Audre Foveo)
Tag: spirituality
Summer, A Time of New Beginnings
There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.
Thomas Merton
Finding Peace
You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.
–Thomas Merton
I’ve begun trauma therapy after living with PTSD for thirty years, and I’m finding it, well, traumatic. Please God, may all of this pain lead me to the peace Merton describes.
An Adventure of My Soul
Every production of an artist should be an expression of an adventure of his soul.
Somerset Maugham
Create Something
The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
–Kurt Vonnegut
A New Year’s Wish
May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
–Neil Gaiman
Wordless Wednesday
Be Soft
My parents have been dead a long time. Or not so long. It depends on my mood, how long it seems. My mom died in April 2007, my dad in January 1993. I often wonder what advice they would give me now, about being childless, being disabled and in chronic pain and often frustrated and depressed. Then, by chance, today I came across a quote that spells out what I know in my heart they would both say to me so perfectly, it gave me chills. In fact, I can hear my mom’s voice…
Wordless Wednesday: A Love Sonnet to October
Falling
Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling and they’re falling like they’re falling in love with the ground.
Andrea Gibson
Chronic Grace 