life makes shapes

"Life makes shapes. Life is a natural, evolutionary process in which series of shapes are continually forming. These shapes are part of an organizing process that embodies emotions, thoughts, and experiences into structure. This structure, in turn, orders the events of existence. Each person?s shape is his embodiment in the world. We are the body we inherit, the one that lives us, and a personal body, the one we live and shape through voluntary effort. We are citizens of two worlds, rooted in the animate, immortal and timeless. Molecules and cells organize into clusters, which further organize as layers, tubes, tunnels and pouches. These give structure to liquid life and set the stage for embodied human consciousness. Through the act of living, a personal human shape grows, one that is changed by the challenges and stresses of life."

-- Stanley Keleman

I Lie

it’s necessary to talk about trees

WHAT KIND OF TIMES ARE THESE

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light —
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.

Adrienne Rich

picasso pots

Holding Space for Not Knowing

"In today’s episode we're talking about holding space for not knowing. Why are we- culturally- people who think we need to know things? There is an underlying assumption that we can know definitive capital T truths- and we want bedrock answers. We want to avoid the feeling of groundlessness that comes with not definitively knowing things. The trouble with that is that we look outside of ourselves for prescriptions of how to live, and we create a society where the stronger your opinion the more right you must be. We wind up without space for sourcing our own answers, or for differing viewpoints, or for the experience of evolving understandings that can shift over time and be alive in their unfolding... so let’s delight in some groundlessness today!"

Ep 32: Holding Space for Not Knowing

click above for a beautiful episode of Bliss and Grit

dreamy

“Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed.”

― Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

Emma Amos

love everything about these.
Painter: Emma Amos

there are only relationships

"The body is not like a machine, an assembly of various parts put together to create a greater whole, and we must stop thinking of ourselves like that.

We are organisms that evolved in complex ecosystems, with layers of interdependence. There are no units that act alone or have any sense autonomy - there are only relationships."

- Peter Blackaby