photo by renée c. gage
"All I can think to say this morning, is please guide my attention to that which is worthy of it.
When I am overwhelmed by everything that has to get fixed in this broken down world, show me what is MINE to do then please give me the strength to do it and the humility to rest afterwards.
Open my eyes to behold that which is hopeful and lovely and to know that the terrifying and malicious will always be there and that looking away for a moment is not callus, it’s calculating.
Guide my attention to that which is worthy of it: making art, cooking food, loving people, noticing birds, petting dogs, contacting friends, and doing the work that is mine to do.
And when I am scrolling through meaningless videos, once again wasting more precious moments on this Earth than I realize, snap me out of it, Lord and help me just go for a walk or something."
"To live a good life is to decide to stop living unconsciously, and to make a decision that you are going to wake up to all that is beautiful and holy and that still works. And to remember that if you want to have loving feelings, you need to do loving things, and you just keep doing these actions that are about awareness and that are about love, and that somehow are helped along by learning to breathe, you know, left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe. And when we breathe, we’re sort of spritzed into awareness. And when we breathe, we’re so deeply nourished. And it creates an umbilical cord between the beauty of life, the awareness of life, and the beauty of the people who, against all odds, just love us more and more with every passing year. A good life means that you get outside every day, that you somehow get outside and you look up. You look at the stars, you look at the moon, you look at the sun, you look at the sunrise. Those are the things that to me constitute the good life."
"We compliment weight loss, monitor our appetites, and shrink ourselves to fit some kind of standard. I wish we could all be the size we actually are. One size doesn't fit all because there are as many sizes as there are women. Let's look closer at the size of our hearts, the width of our souls, and the length of our spirits...
Don't step into lives that aren't yours, make choices that aren't nourishing, or dance stiffly for years with the wrong partner, or parts of yourself.”
"Don't be tempted by the shiny apple
Don't you eat of a bitter fruit
Hunger only for a taste of justice
Hunger only for a world of truth
'Cause all that you have is your soul..."
~ Tracy Chapman
“You cannot, you cannot use someone else’s fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.”
~ Audre Lorde
"If we don't allow ourselves the fundamental honestly of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt."
"What should you do now? Find a new way. A better way. Your way. The unknown, uncharted path through this wild new world that allows you - yourself, in your uniqueness - to reclaim the full measure of your true nature."
"We should always have three friends in our lives: one who walks ahead, who we look up to and follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journey; and then, one who we reach back for and bring along after we've cleared the way."
~ Michelle Obama
"For centuries, the Haenyeo, a group of freediving women, have made a living diving for shellfish and seaweed off of Jeju Island. Many support entire families with their harvest, and are regarded as Korea's first working mothers."
"...being a haenyeo has never been about taking without balance. The women reject the use of oxygen tanks, knowing they would only encourage overharvesting. This respect for the sea underscores the tragedy of their struggle. The ocean is not just their livelihood; it is their legacy..."
"And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to blossom."
~ Anaïs Nin
“For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go.”
"For whatever reason we were put on this planet at this time together, and I think we’re supposed to figure this out together. Every aspect of nature and every healthy ecosystem has that divergence.
The reorientation I’m always trying to get to is like, What if we fundamentally all belong to Earth, if we start from the idea that belonging is a birthright? We have a land that wants us and wants to feed us and hold us, and gravity is going to make sure we don’t float off into space, and that’s so loving. I don’t think that the way we have constructed nation-states is conducive to belonging. It makes it seem like you’re part of something. But it’s not natural. The universe, whoever created this beautiful planet, wasn’t like, Here’s a line, and here’s a line."
"For fast acting relief, try slowing down."
~ Lily Tomlin
" I feel that as long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can; I won't give up until the Earth gives up."
~ Alice Walker
"A place remembered becomes a collection of short moments, fragments of images and sensory impressions, that overlap, merge and combine to create our own internal views that can be returned to time after time. "
"When your heart is broken you plant seeds in the cracks and pray for rain."
"Walls had never defined me, like I had once thought. It was what I brought, from my heart, hands, and soul, to the space within that defined me."
"...in order to benefit fully from this time between stories, it’s necessary to let go not just of action, but of attachment to outcome. The Tao Te Ching asks: “Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water becomes clear? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?”15 Knowing when to gather together our resources and go all-out to change a situation seems easier somehow than recognizing instead when to sit quietly and surrender to its momentum. But the best of all strategies is simply to stay present, because the only certain way through uncertainty is through it.”
Dr. Sharon Blackie, Hagitude
"...my mom opposed the system as a whole. So she never let that stand in her way. You know, and I think I pick up a lot of - I have a lot of my mom's demeanors that she never even - even when she told me the story, she was never angry. She just went, it's a stupid thing, and so I refused to listen to it.
But she never came at it from a place of anger. If anything, she defied it, and she didn't give it the credibility that it was trying to create in the world.
And so that's something that I inherited from my mom was that in my family we were just - we're not quick to anger. If anything - you know, I mean, obviously there are moments where you find things ridiculous or ludicrous, but not quick to anger - rather, find a way to laugh about it or to minimize it using humor."
"radical inclusivity requires a solidity that is not fragmented by your opinions... not projecting your experience, but expanding it..."
~ Joan Halifax in 2018 speaking at an Alexander Technique Conference
"What's the line between the blame that stops you from action and the acknowledgement that catapults you to do the right thing. You've got to practice that one every day."
'"think that the Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity rather than accumulation, where wealth and security come from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency. Without gift relationships with bees and birds, Serviceberries would disappear from the planet. Even if they hoarded abundance, perching atop the wealth ladder, they would not save themselves from the fate of extinction if their partners did not share in that abundance. Hoarding won’t save us either. All flourishing is mutual."
"Humans, birds, and whales learn their songs over the course of their lives. They practice, learn through mistakes, and even compose new songs together. But crickets, who live only a few months and hatch long after their parents’ generation has perished, cannot learn their songs from elders. Rather, each species is born with its own signature song. The composition is genetically encoded and manifests in the specific ridges of the males’ wings.
Even if a cricket is raised in total isolation, having never met another of its kind, he will know how to sing his own particular song—at least after a few raspy attempts. As soon as the cricket known as the handsome trig molts into an adult, he can rub one wing over another and emit his characteristic rattling trill.
A cricket’s song is a beacon of connection to his kind; if it were ever lost, he may be doomed to wander alone in the reeds."
"What’s saving my life right now in my early 70s, married to a man who turns 86 next month, going to more funerals than baptisms, with all that we’ve talked about that there is to lament. “Right now” has become a place where I can find, every day, great joy if I don’t get too ahead of myself. If I get way ahead of myself, I’ll need to take more drugs or something. [laughter]
But if I can stay right now, there is something every single day that is worth staying alive for and worth increasing the life available to everything and everyone about me within a local radius. So what’s saving my life right now is this locality I’ve been talking about. I am at this moment a better grandmother, aunt, sister, spouse than I’ve ever been by my own measure because I’m attending in ways I have not attended. So what’s saving my life right now is the old mantra of staying in the present as best I can and being amazed that life, as it unrolls every single day, is more than scenery as I rush from here to there. That it’s the real deal.
What happens bit by bit, by bit. Whether it’s making a bed for a guest coming and anticipating what we’ll eat, or it’s planning what I want to do at the public library. I’m a terrible volunteer. I don’t show up nearly often enough, but every day, every day, attending to the everyday. And it is such a cliché almost now, but I think it must be because it’s true. So what’s saving my life right now is being in here right now as best I can"
"Years after being led astray in New Mexico [due to a GPS error], I realized how alien getting lost is to some and how unnecessary a tool like GPS is to them.
In Northern Australia I met a Jawoyn elder in her eighties, Margaret Katherine, whose childhood was spent walking on her family's traditional country near the Mann River. At one point I asked what she did when she became lost in the bush. She laughed.
She took my notebook and illustrated how the termite hills always pointed north-south, how the stars showed the way at night, and how all of the rocks, trees, gorges, and escarpments were created by her ancestors who traveled the world in the Dreamtime. Their journeys and landmarks were recorded in songs that she learned and memorized throughout her life. In this place, which struck me as unmarked and bewildering wilderness, it would be nearly impossible to become disoriented because everywhere was home...
...Many of these unique practices have been lost to time or severed through cultural assimilation, oppression, and the extinction of languages. Modernity can engulf local ways of being, redefine borders or create new ones, and circumscribe movement or open up entirely different routes... For the smartphone generation, getting anywhere without relying on GPS is becoming as dissonant with everyday life as writing by hand or reaching for an encyclopedia to find a fact.
...Perhaps the idea that each daily commute, ramble, exploration, expedition, migration, journey, and odyssey we undertake in the minutes, hours, and years of our lives is charged with significance is a romantic conceit drenched in nostalgia about imaginary olden days, a bygone era of nomadism, walkabout, or pilgrimage.
Or maybe wayfinding is an activity that confronts us with the marvelous fact of being in the world, requiring us to look up and take notice, to cognitively and emotionally interact with our surroundings whether we are in the wilderness or a city, even calling us to renew our species' love affair with freedom, exploration, and place..."
"When a friend called to say she had suddenly felt compelled to bake an apple pie last Saturday, I Understood. Anyone who cooks even casually knows the feeling. Cooking is almost always a mood altering experience, for good or for bad, and at best it is do-it-yourself therapy: more calming than yoga, less risky than drugs...
Experts theorize why it works, but to me it seems clear. Everything about cooking engages the senses. There's a physical aspect to it, even if you use a food processor more than a knife, and so at least a couple of endorphins have to be involved. But the psychological impact is even more obvious. When you're all finished, you have something to show for the time and effort: a loaf of bread, a batch of cookies, a pot of stew... hours of putting one step after another led to a kind of serenity, the feeling that no matter what was happening outside y kitchen, I had complete control over one dish, in one copper pot, on one burner.
But cooking also lets you cede control, if that's what you need. There's a reason they call it following a recipe. Sometimes it just feels calming to know that a cake needs exactly one teaspoon of salt and no less than half a pound of butter..."
"The minds of animals are a great, sacred, present mystery. I do think animals have languages, but they are entirely truthful languages.
It seems that we are the only animals who can lie. We can think and sy what is not so and never was so, or what has never been, yet might be. We can invent; we can suppose; we can imagine. All that gets mixed in with memory. And so we're the only animals who tell stories... I am human therefore I life. All human beings are liears; that is true; you must believe me..."
"Keep only those things that speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest."
"...concentration... a particular state of awareness: penetrating, unified, and focused, yet also permeable and open... a simple, unexpected sense of deep accord between yourself and everything...
..Difficulty itself may be a path toward concentration... whether of life or craft, it is not a hindrance to an artist. Sartre called genius " 'not a gift, but the way a person invents in desperate circumstances.' "
"presence is the life force energy in us all... You are in your full power and presence when you are connected to the whole of yourself. Body, mind, heart, and spirit connected, not divided and fragmented...
Every unnecessary physical tension in your body - however small - impacts your presence in yourself and in the world. What you give and what you receive is reduced. Every unnecessary tension dampens our ability to listen and respond to what we hear. Every unnecessary physical tension impedes your breath, which impedes your voice range, resonance and speech, and impedes your ability to think and to feel and make any engagement with the world around you...
My contribution to the healing of women starts with the simple. It is about doing, not explaining, and it is simple. You have to do the simple before you can understand, let alone do, the profound. The work has to be done and delivered.
It is physical, takes time, and cannot be understood through intellectual explaining. Our stories, if they are to have any impact on the world, particularly on the people who don't want to hear them, have to be audible and clear. We who are not welcome in a space cannot expect to engage unsympathetic listeners unless we fully deliver our voice and words, and are compelling... It's a physical commitment to your presence..."
"I think we crave examples of real and complex heroines. We need to give women the opportunity to see themselves in real-life, fearless narratives, and men the opportunity to see the possibility of heroic women. We need the stories that tell of female mettle, bravery, curiosity, and impact—on how we see the world, what we know of it, and what we are capable of in it.
... boundary breakers not only represent their own capabilities—they represent the capabilities of the entire demographic of which they’re from..."
