Category Archives: Poetry

Something Good

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1. This quote from Pema Chödrön’s new book, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change:

It’s not impermanence per se, or even knowing we’re going to die, that is the cause of our suffering, the Buddha taught. Rather, it’s our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation. Our discomfort arises from all of our efforts to put ground under our feet, to realize our dream of constant okayness. When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment, or awakening to our true nature, to our fundamental goodness. Another word for that is freedom—freedom from struggling against the fundamental ambiguity of being human.

2. Two posts from Lissa Rankin: Stop Striving. You Are Already Enough. and 6 Life Lessons I Learned from Blogging.

3. This heartbreaking video. This was going around on Facebook last week, and I finally watched it. This is the real shit. If you’ve ever loved someone and lost them (especially if it was to cancer), and had to keep living after, you will feel this man’s pain, and at the same time be reminded we are not alone.

4. The impossible choice by Sunni Chapman on Roots of She. With everything that’s been going on with my Dexter, this post was pure medicine for me. Especially this,

Oh Life, you are so kind. Even if you had taken him from me, you are still so kind. Because you gave me the love of this dear sweet being, for as long as he wants to be with me, and for a million other reasons, as well. Thank you Life, for this gift of seeing, and thank you Life, for this greatest gift of LOVE.

Thank you, Sunni.

5. The Burning House: What People Would Take if the House Was on Fire on Brain Pickings. I thought so much about this with the fires here this summer, love seeing what people would take, what is precious to them.

6. The Renegade Craft Fair in London on decor8. I would have spent so much money at this. And p.s., I love Holly’s latest blog design, especially the new header and link buttons.

7. 8 life lessons, gracefully learned – advice for my younger self on The Freedom Experiment.

8. Living Into My Words from Erica Staab. And not just because she quoted me, but because of things like this,

How often do we assume that we are the only ones struggling with something, to wrestle alone with our thoughts, fears and doubts only to hear when we finally gain the courage and bravery to share…“Me too.”

9. Famous Writer’s Small Writing Sheds and Off-The-Grid Huts. I felt physical pain looking at these, a tension and nausea in my body because my desire was so intense. I love these, want one someday.

10. Charles Bukowski, Arthur C. Clarke, Annie Dillard, John Cage, and Others on the Meaning of Life from Brain Pickings. So many great quotes here.

11. My Creative Life: Tammy Strobel, an interview with Susannah Conway. I am reading Tammy’s new book right now, so especially loved hearing her talk about her life as a writer. Susannah also shared a few links in her Something for the Weekend post (where I get at least one thing for this list each week) to people living in tiny spaces (Tammy lives in a tiny house) which are making me, once again, want to purge, downsize, declutter, and simplify.

Susannah also shared a link this week to this gorgeous video, The Most Beautiful Lies sung by Clare Bowditch and a few other lovelies.

And while we are talking about the brilliant Susannah Conway, here’s an interview with her on Sassyology.

12. 22 playful + productive + passion-stoking things to do, this September from Alex Franzen on Unicorns for Socialism.

13. The Only Way to Respond to Life, a sweet post by Leo Babauta on Zen Habits. “This moment is a ridiculously generous miracle.”

14. My dog: the paradox on The Oatmeal. Too funny, slightly naughty, and so true.

15. 5 Important Reasons to Slow Down Today on Pick the Brain.

16. 9 Ways to Get a New Venture Cracking from Jennifer Louden.

17. This poem from Rumi.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

18. This quote from the Dalai Lama.

Hardship, in forcing us to exercise greater patience and forbearance in daily life, actually makes us stronger and more robust. From the daily experience of hardship comes a greater capacity to accept difficulties without losing our sense of inner calm. Of course, I do not advocate seeking out hardship as a way of life, but merely wish to suggest that, if you relate to it constructively, it can bring greater inner strength and fortitude.

19. Humans of New York.

20. Our dreams don’t belong to us. They belong to the world. from Kelly Rae Roberts.

I forgot to tell you…

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I forgot to tell you about all the magic we’ve been seeing on our morning walks. This week, it was two beavers, one on each side of east McMurry Pond. Two herons flying together, floating east along the Poudre River. A dog park full of tennis balls. Fog and a light mist softening everything until the sun comes out and warms it away.

This morning, Sam wanted to see another beaver so badly, was so sure he’d see one again that he barked at a log in the water. That happens sometimes, doesn’t it? We want something so badly, want so much for it to be true that we see a beaver when it’s only a piece of wood floating in the water.

The sun has been orange first thing in the morning. Sometimes it’s pale, and other times it’s lit up like the ball of fire it is. Everything green is turning yellow, orange, brown, and gray, so when the golden light of the sun reflects off the turning of the green, it feels like we are walking in a dream.

I forgot to tell you that Dexter is feeling better. We’ve stopped giving him the anti-inflammatory, (although if he starts to get worse again, we might try another type, because that therapy did seem to help, except for the trouble this particular one gave his belly). He still “maybe might probably but we don’t know for sure” have cancer, but right now, in these moments, he is happy, whole, and so loved. We have decided against doing a CT scan (the next step we were offered) because it would require him being under anesthesia again, cost $2000 (wth?!), and:

  • the results still could be inconclusive
  • the scan might reveal “something,” but it might be unclear what exactly that something is
  • it might confirm the cancer, give us a very expensive picture of it, but the treatment for that type of cancer isn’t a cure, doesn’t result in much more time, and the time you get might not be good quality, so isn’t something we’d do anyway (for this cancer, this dog, this family, it wouldn’t be the right decision)

So we continue to live with the uncertainty–which isn’t all that different than what life is always like, the nature of things as they always are. We never really know, can’t be sure or certain about much of anything, and everything is constantly changing. Impermanence is the only thing we can count on, so for now, we are knowing just that.

I forgot to tell you that I bought myself flowers. They remind me that while impermanence is real, that death comes to all of us, sometimes quickly and without warning, life is so beautiful.

I forgot to tell you, kind and gentle reader, that you don’t need permission, you don’t need to earn the right to be who you are and do what you love. You were born with it, that light and deep knowing, that thing that is yours to manifest, that only you can embody, that only you can do and be. There’s nothing that needs done first, no mastery or skill to be learned before. You can take the one, tiny step right now, walk right into the thick of your life, stand in the center. All you have to do is decide, start, begin.

And, I forgot to tell you this:

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.