“Once in a while it vanishes - in the sense that I become deaf to beauty for a week or two or three. This coming and going of the inner life - because this is what it is - is a curse and a blessing. I don’t need to explain why it’s a curse. A blessing because it brings about a movement, an energy which, when it peaks, creates a poem. Or a moment of happiness.”
- Adam Zagajewski

“A lifetime may not be long enough to attune ourselves fully to the harmony of the universe. But just to become aware that we can resonate with it - that alone can be like waking up from a dream.”
- David Steindl-Rast

“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but “steal” some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.”
- Albert Camus

“Tonight I walked around the pond scaring frogs; a couple of them jumped off, going, in effect, eek, and most grunted, and the pond was still. But one big frog, bright green like a poster-paint frog, didn’t jump, so I waved my arm and stamped to scare it, and it jumped suddenly, and I jumped, and then everything in the pond jumped, and I laughed and laughed.”
- Annie Dillard

“The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we do, with great artists; with artists like these we do really fly from star to star.”
- Marcel Proust

I have everything I need

I am fed, I am sheltered, I am quenched

There is nothing outside of me

That would make me more deserving

Of love or life or contentment

I have been blessed in this life

And I will not take it for granted

I will not let it go to waste

I will share my blessings

Simply by being myself

I am not perfect

And I do not need to be

I make mistakes

And I am still worthy

Everything is temporary

My belongings

My circumstances

My body

And yet, everything I touch

Is forever changed

Time is not against me

There is always enough

The possibilities are greater

Than my imagination

I do not need to force an outcome

Or worry about the future

I have enough

I am enough

There is no rush

- Jenny Clark

“Bear in my that you are a great wizard. You can use your powers to practice white magic on yourself instead of the other kind. The most basic way to do that is to concentrate on naming, savoring, and feeling gratitude for the blessings you do have…

Don’t ignore the bad stuff, but make a point of celebrating the good stuff with all the exuberant devotion you can muster.”

- Rob Brezsny, Pronoia

nature blessing