More

"I am aware that I am less than some people prefer me to be, but most people are unaware that I am so much more than what they see."

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  Douglas Pagels 

Stress

"What I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter how great your diet is if your body is flooded with stress hormones! No amount of kale is going to counterbalance the toxic effects of high levels of cortisol and epinephrine on your body. So what’s the most important part of your health? The nature of your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. When your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings are positive, relaxation responses are activated, healing hormones like oxytocin, dopamine, nitric oxide, and endorphins are released, and the body’s natural self-repair mechanisms are activated, allowing the body to do what it does best-heal itself.”

- Lissa Rankin, M.D

Prodigal Summer

"Nothing was more wonderful than waiting for a happiness you could be sure of." — Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer

Let

“Let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as unaccomplished as you think you are. To believe that you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark room.”

— Marc Hack

What's Past is Prologue

"What's past is prologue."

-Shakespeare, The Tempest

Before Flowers

I sit before flowers
hoping they will train me in the art
of opening up

 — Shane Koyczan

Art & Empathy

"There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."

— Vincent Van Gogh

Pure Nectar

"Look past your thoughts so you may drink the pure nectar of this moment."

— Rumi 

Final

"In any case you mustn’t confuse a single failure with a final defeat."

— F. Scott Fitzgerlad 

Mental States

“What I really like to learn how to do is to build sentences that are equal to mental states. 
— Richard Powers 

Untold

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
—Maya Angelou

True

"Let us be eager to leave what is familiar for what is true." — Fran Chan 

Kinder

"Reality is always kinder than your thinking."

— Byron Katie

If You Don't Mean It

“Don’t touch me if you don’t mean it." 
— The War Boys 

Veruca-Salt-Psychosis

Full post found here by the lovely Meg Fee

"i mention all of this because the way in which we grow and eat food is a tremendous allegory for our current state of affairs.

we (the collective cultural we) are looking for answers in the wrong place. we want immediate results. we want to press the big-red-easy button and reap our rewards. i think collectively we’re all straining under a sort of veruca-salt-psychosis: i want it and i want it now.
and this isn’t dictating just the manner in which we try to lose weight–it governs what we eat and when. we eat raspberries flown from halfway across the world because they’re not in season where we live, but we still want them. we exploit the lives of countless animals and try to expedite the process in which they age so as to have more and have it now (and we do this by pumping them full of antibiotics and hormones which we then ingest second hand). i want and i want it now is now our cultural refrain. and it’s stripping the earth of its precious resources at a startling rate.
we are a selfish species.
we buy more and spend more and waste more and we do it in the name of capitalism.


we need to eat more simply and live more simply. we need to go back to the dinner table. sit around it with our family (and accept that many people now have different working definitions of this word). break bread. take vegetables form the garden. and connect in a way that has nothing to do with facebook and foursquare and any of the other multitudinous applications that serve a purpose i’m no longer sure of."

You See I Study Art

Barbarity

"Do your bit to save humanity from lapsing back into barbarity by reading all the novels you can." — Richard Hughes

Story

"When you stand and share your story in an empowering way, your story will heal you and your story will heal somebody else."

— Iyanla Vanzant 

Then and Now Broken Men

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."

-Frederick Douglass

People Wait.

"People wait.

They wait for the elusive day when they'll finally have enough time (guess what? - you never will), enough education (there's always more to know), enough money (no matter how much you make, someone will always have more) . . . People wait until that fateful day when they wake up and realize that while they were sitting around paying dues, earning their keep, waiting for that elusive 'perfect time' their entire life has passed them by."

-The Power of Doing Something Stupid by Richie Norton

Ordinary Things

"Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior’s world."

 | Pema Chödrön

Lesson 153

In my defenselessness my safety lies. 

"You who feel threatened by this changing world, its twists of fortune and its bitter jests, its brief relationships and all the "gifts" it merely lends to take away again; attend this lesson well...."

-Course of Miracles, lesson 153

Gatsby

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had." — 

Opening Line from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald