#15

Where is the limit of a person? How can you be limited? A person is limited according to his attachment. It doesn't matter what you have or what you don't have; it matters only how easily you can let go.

-Yogi Bhajan

#14

Once there was a boy named Charlie, who had a nice life - but it wasn’t perfect. He had to spend too much of his time doing things he didn’t want to do. So one day he packed up all his time in a suitcase, locked it up and set off to find a better way to spend it. Charlie traveled the world looking for the perfect thing to make him happy. In the meantime, unbeknownst to him, his itsy-bitsy seconds and silky, smooth hours and raggedy days ticked away, so that when Charlie stopped traveling and realized what he truly wanted out of life, it was almost too late. Almost.

Daren and Daniel Simkin, The Traveler

#13

I am sending you

postcards from a place

where I am not.

We’re not tourists, we’re travelers

a tourist is someone who

thinks about going home the

moment they arrive

whereas a traveler

might not come

back at all.

-Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

(introduced to me by my faux friend Ian)

#12

Yellow Boat 1910, Odilon Redon

Dearest boy, my Adam. I dreamed a dream, you and I facing each other in a tiny yellow boat. On green water, under blue sky, my and my son, and a tiny yellow boat. And we laugh, and the boat rocks, and the ripples spread from the boat, to pond, to sea, to sky, and nothing can stop them, and nothing ever will.

-Joan of Arcadia

#11

Ok...

I leave my one and only grain of spiritual sand to universal scales of humanity, All humanity. Forever is finding a solution to a solution. Tsunamis, Hurricanes, Following the trails of the African slave ships. War, War, and more War. Floods, Columbine, Global Warming, Earthquakes. Another somebody's done me wrong, son. Virginia Tech, there's not a hole but to Heck. We're still, did you place your one grain of spiritual sand forever?

Confusion need a solution. Blend and stir, stir and blend the pot of humanity. Sift the ingredients of acknowledgment, apology, amendment, atonement. We gonna work with the four A's here. Forever part,

Common good is forever

God's memory is forever....

-"Forever Begins" Lonnie "pops" Lynn

#10

We watched the towers collapse. We watched America choose war. The peace in our own hearts shattered.

How to pick up the pieces?

What to do with the pieces?

I was desperate to retrieve the poetry I had lost.

Standing on a rocky point in Maine, looking east toward the horizon at dusk, I faced the ocean. "Give me one wild word." It was all I asked of the sea.

The tide was out. The mudflats exposed. A gull picked up a large white clam, hovered high above the rocks, then dropped it. The clam broke open, and the gull swooped down to eat the fleshy animal inside.

"Give me one wild word to follow..."

-Terry Tempest Williams, Finding Beauty in a Broken World

#9

By measuring sound vibrations, scientists know that the caterpillar in the cocoon is shrieking. Screaming in pain as its body changes form from the caterpillar -- a lowly creature, in most senses -- to the beloved and beautiful butterfly. The butterfly is used in many traditions as a symbol of transformation and especially transmutation through death. Yet, in our highly romanticized versions, we do not acknowledge the transformation as a painful process. Painful, but not fatal.

-Deborah Morris Coryell, "Good Grief: Healing Through the Shadow of Loss"