Month: August 2014

Sauntering

by drbillwooten, posted in Abundance, Human Spirit, Life, Nature, Time

John Muir on Hiking . . .

“Hiking – I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not hike! Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter?’ It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, “A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”

~ John Muir, quoted by Albert Palmer in A Parable of Sauntering
Mountains

The invitation

by drbillwooten, posted in Change, Human Spirit, Life, Time

“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and
if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or
have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain!

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own,
if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be
careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you’re telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every
day, and if you can source your life from God’s presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of a lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes”!

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you are, how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,
and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.”

~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer, from the book The Invitation

mirror3

 

I choose

by drbillwooten, posted in Change, Human Spirit, Life, Time

“I will not die an unlived life,
I will not live in fear
Of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days
To allow my living to open me,
To make me less afraid,
more accessible,
To loosen my heart
Until it becomes a wing,
A torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance; to live
So that which came to me as seed
Goes to the next as blossom
And that which came to me as blossom
Goes on as fruit.”

~ Dawna Markova, from the book I Will Not Die an Unlived Life

Fork

Verspers

by drbillwooten, posted in Abundance, Hope, Human Spirit, Joy, Life, Time

August 21,1920 Christopher Robin Milne was born, an only child to A. A. Milne. Christopher also wrote, his first two books, “Enchanted Places” and “The Path Through the Trees,“. being memoirs of his growing up and out from under the shadow of the fictional Christopher Robin. The first of these, written after both parents had died, has partly the tone of setting-the-record-straight, partly that of settling-the-score. Each day of writing, Milne said, was “like a session on the analyst’s couch” in an effort to look both his father and Christopher Robin in the eye.

Christopher Milne’s surest love in his first decade was for his Nanny, and for the fields, wood and river of the family’s weekend Sussex retreat. His feeling was that he was but “a part-time hobby” to his parents and that, had he suddenly disappeared, “I would certainly not have missed my father.” Amid the general resentment at parental neglect and exploitation, Milne singles out as being particularly rankling his father’s first, famous Christopher Robin poem, “Vespers” (When We Were Very Young, 1924):

“Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed,
Droops on the little hands little gold head.
Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

God bless Mummy. I know that’s right.
Wasn’t it fun in the bath to-night?
The cold’s so cold, and the hot’s so hot.
Oh! God bless Daddy – I quite forgot.

If I open my fingers a little bit more,
I can see Nanny’s dressing-gown on the door.
It’s a beautiful blue, but it hasn’t a hood.
Oh! God bless Nanny and make her good….”