quotations and poetry

“Times of change are holy. We may not know where we are going. It may not feel like our feet are on solid ground. They aren’t. We are crossing a bridge to another part of our lives. Sometimes we may find ourselves at this bridge unwittingly, not certain how we got there, not certain we want to cross. Other times we may have sought, prayed for, hoped for, longed for this time of change. Drive across the bridge. You don’t have to understand it all right now. Information and understanding will come later. You’ll get to the other side. For now trust and experience what your are going through. Know that this time of change is sacred too.”

– Melody Beattie

Thank you to Gloria for sharing these powerful words with me.

And as with prayer, which is a dipping of oneself toward the light, there is a consequence of attentiveness to the grass itself, and to the sky itself, and to the floating bird.  I too leave the fret and enclosure of my own life.  I too dip toward the immeasurable.

– Mary Oliver, Winter Hours

Thank you to Katie, whose post about this book reminded me of it and caused me to re-read it.

I believe in movement.  I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world.  I believe in midnight and the hour of noon.  But what else do I believe in?  Sometimes everything.  Sometimes nothing.  It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond.

– Patti Smith, M Train

I have refused to live
locked in the orderly house of
reasons and proofs.
The world I live in and believe in
is wider than that.  And anyway,
what’s wrong with Maybe?

You wouldn’t believe what once or
twice I have seen. I’ll just
tell you this:
only if there are angels in your head will you
ever, possibly, see one.

– Mary Oliver, Felicity

Pru asked if she was okay, and June answered with a question that seemed to Pru to be more of a comment on June’s struggles with Lolly: Did you ever have a family?  Pru said she sounded completely wiped out, at wit’s end.  She asked June if she wanted to walk back with her to the house, but she politely declined, saying she needed to be alone a little while longer.

Pru told us that night that she’d never felt as grateful.  That her answer to June’s question had been yes, but not as a commiseration, or as an explanation of fatigue, as it seemed to be for June, but both as an acknowledgment of great fortune and a prayer of thanks.  With Mike on the line from Tacoma, and Mimi and I huddled over her iPhone on speaker in the kitchen, Pru whispered to us, Thank you.

– Bill Clegg, Did You Ever Have a Family