spirit

Quote for Today: Michael Meade

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There will always be the facts of life to contend with, and there are times when the facts can become overwhelming. Yet, there is a poem at the heart of things and a mythic story in the heart of each of us. At certain times it is the poetry of life and the mythic imagination of the soul that become necessary in order to heal the wounds inflicted by an excess of reason or an overuse of force. When we unfold the story wound within our souls and untie the knots within us, we add presence to the world and contribute to the spirit of life in a specific and authentic way.

― Michael Meade, The Genius Myth

Image by Gérard JAWORSKI from Pixabay

Quote for Today: Christine Evangelou

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Staying Power

And the greatest beauty you could clothe your body with
Are the gilded gems of staying power
Like traces of molten gold fusing through your cells
That which has the capacity to overcome, endure, persevere
And stay ever faithful to the soul beneath the person
To the spirit that cauterizes the flames
No matter what
And forever more

― Christine Evangelou, Diamonds Through The Dark

Image by Myriam Zilles from Pixabay

Quote for Today: Zhuangzi

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Life, death, preservation, loss, failure, success, poverty, riches, worthiness, unworthiness, slander, fame, hunger, thirst, cold, heat – these are the alternations of the world, the workings of fate. Day and night they change place before us, and wisdom cannot spy out their source. Therefore, they should not be enough to destroy your harmony; they should not be allowed to enter the storehouse of the spirit. If you can harmonize and delight in them, master them and never be at a loss for joy; if you can do this day and night without break and make it be spring with everything, mingling with all and creating the moment within your own mind – this is what I call being whole in power.

― Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi

Image by Quang Nguyen vinh from Pixabay 

Quote for Today: Paulette Jiles

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BRIM FROST '87

Outside, as she passed the kitchen window, she watched her breath appear before her in the lamplight and then it died away in moist clouds. This was the smoke of her internal fire and her soul. Every breath was a letter to the world. These she mailed into the cold air leaning back with pursed lips to send it upward.
― Paulette Jiles, Enemy Women

Public Domain Image via U.S. National Archives

Quote for Today: Alice Munro

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You are saying, are you not, I said to Manuelito, that stories have more room in them than ideas?

He laughed.

That is correct, Señor. It is as if ideas are made of blocks. Rigid and hard. And stories are made of a gauze that is elastic. You can almost see through it, so what is beyond is tantalizing. You can’t quite make it out; and because the imagination is always moving forward, you yourself are constantly stretching. Stories are the way spirit is exercised.

Alice Munro, By the Light of My Father’s Smile

Public Domain Image: Sami drum of undefined origin, Jens Andreas Friis, Lappisk mythologi, eventyr og folkesagn (1871)