Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.
Praying It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.
What will you do with your one precious, wild life?
A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the trees, or the laws which pertain to them.
What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? Would would this would be like without dogs?
Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
I don’t ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us...
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began...
The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees – to learn something by being nothing.
Listen – are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
And I say to my heart: rave on.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination...