Letting go is a common theme at the end of a year. At least three friends have mentioned burning bowl ceremonies recently which offer a ritual to consider worries or habits or relationships we intend to release. And objects, too. I go through closets and cabinets, and John is cleaning out the garage each afternoon—finding things to give away to make more room.
I am reminded by my sweatshirt, which is worn and faded, but still my favorite to slip into mornings when the house is cold, that there is a keep pile, too, even from these pandemic years. I want to carry forward this renewed admiration for simplicity: The way make-do yoga class on the lawn with friends can turn into my favorite way to do yoga. Or the joy I get from seeing how the library in our backyard along the trail evokes smiles.
This year, along with clothes and books to re-home or reread, I have a lot of index cards with words authored by others scattered around my office, used as bookmarks, or piled into stationary boxes where I someday intend to do something with them. Sifting through them now is slow going, as I remember all I’ve read, all I want to someday write.
And I know exactly where this tendency comes from! My mom was a collector of words. Before I could even read, we memorized favorite poems by Robert Louis Stevenson and recited Madeline like a duet. When I was school age and the new Reader’s Digest arrived, Mom and I would read our favorite “Quotable Quotes,” aloud to each other, me sitting on the shag carpeted stairs, my mom on the couch staring out at the trees. It was there I was introduced to Carl Sandburg and T. S. Eliot and Margaret Mead!
Later, Mom gathered quotes into books she called Borrowed Wisdom that my dad printed and bound using his recycled calendar company materials. She would pass them along to us at Christmas. Mom wrote her own poems, too, but I think finding quotes that illuminated the truth she carried inside her gave her hope and a sense of connection.
In past years, I’ve included a list of books I’ve read and loved from the prior year in a post. With school, that list is skewed and sprawling in ways that makes it more difficult for me to know what to include. Instead I’ve decided to share some of words that prompted me to grab a pen and index card mid-page, a curated collection from the keep pile.
Borrowed Wisdom 2021
Ancestors
The world today is just as full of sacred presence as it was centuries ago. With the hardening of our minds we are no longer able to feel and sense the ever-present sacred the way our ancestors did. We desperately need to retrieve our capacity for reverence…we let our days fall away like empty shells and we miss all the treasure.
John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Yearning to Belong (76-77)
Walking I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.
Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World (159)
Our stories from the oldest days tell about the time when all beings shared a common language–thrushes, trees, mosses, and humans. But that language has been long forgotten. So we learn each other’s stories by looking, by watching each other’s way of living. I want to tell the mosses’ story, since their voices are little heard and we have much to learn from them. They have messages of consequence that need to be heard, the perspectives of species other than our own. The scientist within me wants to know about the life of mosses and science offers one powerful way to tell their story. But it’s not enough. The story is also about relationship.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (vii)
I wash her neck and lift the blankets to move down her heart. / I thank her body for carrying us through the tough story.
Joy Harjo, “Washing My Mother’s Body,” An American Sunrise (32)
Toward the end of her brilliant career, Kübler-Ross was convinced that there really is no death, only a leaving of the body to take another form. Like those who believe in an afterlife, resurrection, or reincarnation, death becomes, then, not an end, but a new beginning. These insights, however enlightening, do not change the fact that in death we surrender our embodied life on earth. Love is the only force that allows us to hold one another close beyond the grave. That is why knowing how to love each other is also a way of knowing how to die.
bell hooks, All About Love (202)
Action
We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality, and arrive where reality is.
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (91)
We cannot name or be named without language. If our vocabulary dwindles to a few shopworn words, we are setting ourselves up for takeover by a dictator. When language becomes exhausted, our freedom dwindles–we cannot think; we do not recognize the danger; injustice strikes us as no more than “the way things are.”
Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (30-31)
If we really knew how unhappy it was making the whole planet that we all try to avoid pain and seek pleasure–how that was making us so miserable and cutting us off from our basic heart and our basic intelligence–then we would practice meditation as if our hair was on fire.
Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (104)
So the practice is not to fight or suppress the feeling, but rather to cradle it with a lot of tenderness. When a mother embraces her child, that energy of tenderness begins to penetrate into the body of the the child. Even if the mother does’t understand at first why the child is suffering and she needs some time to find out what the difficulty is, just her act of taking the child into her arms with tenderness can already bring relief. If we can recognize and cradle the suffering while we breathe mindfully there is relief already.
Thich Nhat Hanh, No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering (27)
If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, / Then love becomes our legacy, / And change our children’s birthright.
Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb (25)
Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth…In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
Viktor Frankl, Mans Search for Meaning (132)
What happens when they realize that the Americans don’t actually care about this? “Well, do you think they don’t?” If they did, I’m sure I wouldn’t be the one making this clear to the Salvadorans. “You’re right. That is an excellent observation, but don’t worry. No one is going to admit having listened to a poet. That is your protection. Now try to get some sleep.“
Carolyn Forché, What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance (185)
Spirit
The poem Death finally conjures up the moment (while I was standing one night on the beautiful bridge in Toledo) a shooting star which fell through outer space in a taut and slow curve passed at the same time (how shall I put this?) through inner space: The dividing contour of the body was no longer there.
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation (24)
All too many people attempt to face the tensions of life with inadequate spiritual resources. When vacationing in Mexico, Mrs. King and I wished to go deep-sea fishing. For reasons of economy, we rented an old and poorly equipped boat. We gave this little thought until, ten miles from shore, the clouds lowered and howling winds blew. Then we became paralyzed with fear, for we knew our boat was deficient. Multitudes of people are in a similar situation. Heavy winds and weak boats explain their fear.
Martin Luther King, Jr. “Antidotes to Fear,” Strength to Love (127)
As I grow older, I discover more and more that the greatest gift I have to offer is my own joy of living, my own inner peace, my own silence and solitude, my sense of well-being.
Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World (113)
God is both intimate and ultimate.
Richard Rohr, Just This (64)
Know that your vision will follow you back and must be incorporated into your life and the lives of those you know. The best way to communicate your experience to others, says [Steven] Foster, is not to talk about it but to live it. “Vision if it is anything, is your life story in action.”
Greg Levoy, Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life (162)
And we might, in our lives, have many thresholds, many houses to walk out of from and view the stars, or to turn and go back to for warmth and company. But the real one—the actual house not of beams and nails but of existence itself—is all of earth, with no door, no address separate from ocean and stars, or from pleasure or wretchedness either, or hope, or weakness, or greed.
Mary Oliver, Long Life (24)
This is why we love the earth, honor the human body, and bless the stars. Religion is not just a matter of things unseen. For us the Holy is not hidden but shows its face in the blush of the world’s exuberance.
William F. Shultz, quoted by Forrest Church in Chosen Faith (193)
The final verse is always the trees.
Joy Harjo, “Exile of Memory” An American Sunrise, (13)
More Resources
When People Change Their Minds, a recent NYT guest essay by a palliative care expert, mirrors what I have often heard from those who work with the dying and facilitators of Death Cafés: the most important end-of-life planning is to select a health agent who knows you well and understands what is important to you. I might add, to have conversations about end-of-life matters early and often with those you love, so it isn’t so hard to talk about when someone becomes sick or when circumstances and perspectives change.
My Art, Religion, and Contemporary Culture course included an incredible materials including films about extraordinary artists that broadened my perspective considerably. I’ve listed three below that especially spoke to me, but there are many others that I included on my Library II page. With thanks to my UTS Art Instructor, Dr. Jennifer Awes-Freeman for introducing me to these and so much more.
Kusama Infinity: The Life and Art of Yayoi Kusama (YouTube, Also available as a rental on Prime).
Jeong Kwan, Chef’s Table (Also available on Netflix). Jeong Kwan is a monk in Korea who cooks for the temple community. So much beauty.
Muralist Judy Baca and Social Public Art Resource Center (short YouTube clip) This is a segment from a PBS episode of Neighbors. What Baca says in the first two minutes is priceless (and the rest, too).
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