Saturday, November 29, 2014

Choice

"I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we’d choose anyway. "


-The Chaos of Stars

Thief of Life

“We waste so many days waiting for weekend. So many nights wanting morning. Our lust for future comfort is the biggest thief of life.”

Joshua Glenn Clark 

Calm

“When thinking about life, remember this: no amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future.”

This is so important. 

Brave is Not a Pleaser

"I think we like to talk a lot about being brave because the actual doing of it is so freaking terrifying. And tiring. And ordinary. It’s my belief that true fearlessness comes from living loved. When we find our worth and our value in Christ, then, as the Psalmist wrote, what can man do to us? I don’t think we can be a people-pleaser or an approval-addict AND be brave with our lives. Perhaps that’s why fearlessness or bravery starts with our identity first, it’s the deep well from which we draw living water, enough for today. I believe that bravery is born in the quiet and ordinary moments long before it’s seen by anyone else. Sometimes it’s as simple and devastating as the moments no one else will ever see – the moments of daring to be honest with our own self, of laying down our excuses or justifications or disguises, of asking ourselves what we really want, of forgiveness, of honesty, of choosing the hard daily work of restoration, of staying resolutely alive when every one else is just numbing themselves against life. These are why our friends matter so deeply: they are witness to the sacred secrets. Not all secrets are terrifying things, some of them are beautiful and transformative.”

Sarah Bessey

Movement

“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”

John Muir

Love Don't Fall

“What is commonly called ‘falling in love’ is in most cases an intensification of egoistic wanting and needing. You become addicted to another person, or rather to your image of that person. It has nothing to do with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever.”

Eckhart Tolle

Monday, November 24, 2014

Action Packed

"Never mistake motion for action."

-Ernest Hemingway

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Too Much

"You will always be too much of something for someone: too big, too loud, too soft, too edgy. If you round out your edges, you lose your edge."

-Danielle LaPorte

Monday, November 17, 2014

About to get real

I love you

For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can't help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find...

-Erich Fried

Bud to Bloom

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress."

-Frederick Douglas

And then covers them snug

"I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says 'Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.'"

-Lewis Carrol

Friday, November 14, 2014

Simplify

“When things aren’t adding up in your life, start subtracting.”

Forests

“Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest — thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood. You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated.”

Beau Taplin || T e m p l e s  

November

“It was November - the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines.”

L.M. Montgomery 

Self Respect

“Truly powerful women don’t explain why they want respect. They simply don’t engage those who don’t give it to them.”

-Sherry Argov

Seeds

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Tiny Love Stars

“So you protected yourself and loved small. Picked the tiniest stars out of the sky to own; lay down with head twisted in order to see the loved one over the rim of the trench before you slept.”

Beloved by Toni Morrison 

Stress

“Stress is caused by being here but wanting to be there.

Eckhart Tolle 

Edit

“Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It’s your masterpiece after all.”

Nathan W. Morris 

Like Water

“She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs. ‘Time’ for her isn’t something to fight against. Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water.”


Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Chains and Expectations

"That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."

-Charles Dickens, Great Expectations,  ch. 9

Chambers of a Quivering Heart

"Words are much stronger than I am. I take a deep breath and sidestep my fear and begin speaking from the place where beauty and bravery meet--within the chambers of a quivering heart."

-Terry Tempest Williams

Questions Questions

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves."

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Monday, November 10, 2014

You are the stars

"Many people feel small because they're small and the universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars. There's a level of connectivity. That's really what you want in life: you want to feel connected, you want to feel relevant, you want to feel like you're a participant. … That's precisely what we are, just by being alive.”

-Neil deGrasse Tyson

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Dark and Light

"Having avowed over much of Wuthering Heights, there 'broods a horror of great darkness'; that, in its storm-heated and electrical atmosphere we seem at times to breathe lightning, let me point out to those spots where clouded day-light and the eclipsed sun still attest their existence."

-Charlotte Bronte when discussing the darkness of her sister's book, Wuthering Heights

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Bland is Easy

"There was a moment where I realized that playing it safe was hurting me. It’s easy to be bland and inoffensive as a brand, to not want to offend people. "

-Anni Cee Photographie