Bushes Afire

Every common bush [is] afire with God; but only he who sees, takes off his shoes.’

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(Aurora Leigh, book 7, lines 822-3)

Learning How to Think

"Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience."

- David Foster Wallace
(from his 2005 commencement speech)

"I cried to dream again"

"...and then in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again."

- William Shakespeare, The Tempest, 3.2

An Ancient Gesture

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don’t know where, for years,
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture - a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope…
Penelope, who really cried.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

Our Greatest Fear..."

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

-Maryanne Willamson

The Old Brag of My Heart

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.”
- Sylvia Plath

"If the young are not initiated..."

"If the young are not initiated into the village, they will burn it down just to feel its warmth."

- AFRICAN PROVERB