I bought this piece during Christina Rosalie’s recent Celebrate Spring! studio sale. She’s one of my favorite writers and I adore her art. I’d tried in past studio sales to buy something, but I was never quick enough. By the time I would look at what she was offering, find my favorite, someone else had already claimed it. When I saw this one — the bird in flight, the quote on the bottom, the colors — I knew it was my favorite, but it was listed first so I thought for sure it would already belong to someone else. I was so surprised when I clicked on it and saw that no one had claimed it yet. I refreshed the page a few times because I couldn’t believe it. Once it sunk in that no one else had picked it, I left a comment: Me please. ❤
“Magic through the heart.” I love that so much. I asked Christina what kind of bird it is, but she hasn’t told me yet, and I’m glad. I guessed it’s a sparrow, with that little body and the shape of its head, but I’ve never seen a blue one. I did some research this morning to see if it might be a real sparrow or simply an artistic representation, or another bird altogether. First I searched for blue birds, then for blue sparrows, and what I found is a sweet little mystery. There shouldn’t be blue sparrows, and yet they’ve apparently been spotted in both Australia and Canada — but no one can explain them. I found a few articles about the mystery, Blue sparrow mystery: Unique bird confounds experts and Brown Bird Blue: Unique, Never-Before-Seen Color Mutation Amazes Experts and The Riddle of the Blue Sparrow…, along with a few pictures.
The world is such a magic, mysterious place. We think we know, but we don’t know anything, can’t explain how such things can happen or exist. Simply by paying attention, noticing, being curious and patient, you discover the most interesting things. Sometimes it’s a thing entirely new, like a bird the color of the ocean that no one can explain, and other times it’s remembering, like hearing the sound of the birds in the early morning of spring and realizing for the first time how quiet the mornings had been all winter — either way, it feels like waking up.
We need more women that are so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational, and so disciplined they can be free.
17. Six ways of compassionate living, (also known as the six Paramitas), wisdom from Pema Chödrön,
Generosity. Giving as a path of learning to let go. Discipline. Training in not causing harm in a way that is daring and flexible. Patience. Training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed. If waking up takes forever, still we go moment by moment, giving up all hope of fruition and enjoying the process. Joyful enthusiasm. Letting go of our perfectionism and connecting with the living quality of every moment. Meditation. Training in coming back to being right here with gentleness and precision. Prajna (or transcendent wisdom). Cultivating an open, inquiring mind.
18. A wonderful Zen koan: Student: “I’m reaching for the light, please help me.”
Teacher: “Forget about the light. Give me the reaching.”
26. Bad Luck of Random Mutations Plays Predominant Role in Cancer, Study Shows. Next time I hear someone say stress or using plastic containers or eating dairy causes cancer, instead of punching them in the face I’ll give them the link to this. (Confession: having lost loved ones to cancer, it makes me so mad when I hear anyone trying to assign blame solely to the choices people make — even though I understand they do it to feel safe because it would mean all they have to do to avoid the hell that is cancer would be to make the “right” choices, because it would mean we can control what happens to us).
I’d spent so many years believing that when I lost weight, I would turn into a different person — an easygoing, thick-haired, long-legged, Angelina Jolie type — that it took me awhile to get used to the thinner version of the same old me. But then I realized that I had a life that no one else could have. I stopped writing poetry (which I was terrible at) and started writing what only I could write — my books about emotional eating from a personal perspective. When I gave up wanting to have a life that wasn’t my own, I was able to grow into the life that was already mine, waiting for me to see, inhabit, and live it.
Try this experiment: Instead of waiting to be thin to be happy, try being happy right now. Live as if you were already thin, as if you liked yourself, as if you chose to have the life you have right now.
My bet is that you will discover the real It thing: the riches of your own life that were yours all along.
30. Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying on The Rumpus. Heartbreaking, but so beautifully written and honest — the best kind of writing.
31. Gracias a La Vida (Cover) by Daniela Andrade. Such beautiful lyrics.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 