Is childhood ever long enough, or a happy time, or even a beautiful summer day? All of these carry the seeds of the same fierce mystery that we call death.
~ Eugene Kennedy
Beginnings
Paint Mines Interpretive Park. Calhan, Colorado. August 2010.
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.
~ T. S. Eliot
I’m not sure I have many followers here at Bountiful Healing anymore. I’ve let the blog stagnate, occasionally bringing back the posts I set to private when I thought I might be shutting this place down.
I have found, though, that this blog doesn’t want to be shut down. I’m drawn back to it from time to time. This is one of those times. Some of the plans and challenges I have coming up might require the morning attitude adjustment this blog brought to me. I might also find it a good place to play, just as I did in the past. It can’t be all seriousness all the time.
In keeping with fresh starts, I’ve redecorated a little. It was a strange thing, changing the theme. I’ve used that theme since the beginning of Bountiful Healing. It will be fun seeing what I can do with the new one, but I suspect I’ll miss the old one every now and then (especially during those times I’m not sure what I’m doing with the features on the new one). I will continue to bring back some of the old posts as well, little by little. I’ve resisted doing it all at once because I know it causes tons of emails to be released to those who have email subscriptions. Slow and steady ought to do it, for the blog as well as the plans and challenges I’ll be dealing with soon.
The first drops of rain always bring a smile on our faces. The smell of wet soil, the damp grass, and the slosh of puddles under our feet makes us want to dance with wanton joy. Rains make a heart go romantic. Ever danced in the rain? The feeling is inexplicably beautiful. Hold your sweetheart’s hand and walk in the rain while the clouds play cupid.
~ G. K. Chesterton
Be not the slave of your own past —
plunge into the sublime seas,
dive deep, and swim far,
so you shall come back
with self-respect,
with new power,
with an advanced experience,
that shall explain
and overlook
the old.~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The wind blows hard among the pines
Toward the beginning
Of an endless past.
Listen: you’ve heard everything.~ Shinkichi Takahashi, Zen Poems of China and Japan, Lucien Stryk, p. 125
(Approaching the abyss)
We have no where to go (really) but down — eventually we must all let go and jump — it is supposedly that act which propels us to the next level — to enlightenment. What would bring us to this point — where are we willing to give up the self? Does the fall into the abyss always result in enlightenment? How would we know? What do we have to give up to make such a leap?
~ Hakuin Ekaku
I don’t know how we know. I do know one of the things we have to give up to make a leap, any leap, is fear. I’ve had to give it up a few times, to carry on with the commitment I made to get outside every day. I think it was the commitment that gave me the courage to give up the fear so I could make those leaps.
Or maybe I’m just plain crazy, like The Fool in the Tarot, a card I have long identified with. Sometimes it takes a little crazy to move on or move up, or even just to carry on.
Change is a measure of time and, in the autumn, time seems speeded up. What was is not and never again will be; what is is change.
~ Edwin Teale
Morning prospective: imagination.
Evening retrospective: memory.~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
To seek the living manifestation of spiritual and ethical values themselves, regardless of the label they come under, is to discover unexpected kinship… In this view, faith is no longer a matter of an allegiance to a specific community or identity, but a ceaseless search for the beautiful ways to realize the human potential in every given age and place.
~ Mohja Kahf
(Fishing the Colorado River.)
Fishing provides that connection with the whole living world. It gives you the opportunity of being totally immersed, turning back into yourself in a good way. A form of meditation, some form of communion with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self.
~ Ted Hughes
Bountiful Healing 