Being (Vol.3, No. 12)
Here are a few things I’m sharing this month:
1. Question I’m living with:
- “If right now you were to tell the story of the world, what would your first sentence be? – Pádraig Ó Tuama (ht On-Being)
2. Quote I’m considering:
- “The skull quadruples in size in the first few years, and if the bones knit together too soon, they restrict the growth of the brain; and if they don’t knit at all the brain remains unprotected. Open enough to grow and closed enough to hold together is what a life must also be. We collage ourselves into being, finding the pieces of a worldview and people to love and reasons to live and then integrate them into a whole, a life consistent with its beliefs and desires, at least if we’re lucky.” – Rebecca Solnit (“Recollections of my Non-Existence” p. 191)
3. Poem I’m pondering:
Excerpt from “The Mockingbird” by Mary Oliver
4. Something inspiring:
BILL MOYERS: What is ecstasy?
COLEMAN BARKS: When I was a child in Chattanooga, sometimes in April, I remember I was like seven or eight years old and when that spring gold light would come, ah, at the end of the day that’s just there for about ten minutes? You know what I’m talking about…
BILL MOYERS: Mm-hm.
COLEMAN BARKS: … in the South? That gold time?
BILL MOYERS: Mm-hm.
COLEMAN BARKS: I could hardly stand it as a child. I would — I would lay down and hug myself. And I’d be there and my mother and father would be playing bridge with the Penningtons, you know, and, ah — and I’d look — I’d say, “Mama, I’ve got that full feeling again,” just laying on the floor holding myself, you know? And she’d say, “I know you do, honey.” So, you know, I grew up in an ecstatic — just living in this beautiful, gorgeous place of the Tennessee Valley, and around all of these ecstatic teachers. I had a Latin teacher that was just unbelievable. I mean he was — he would stand up on the desk and just scream, you know, “Young men! I love words.” (from Bill Moyers’ interview of Coleman Barks)
5. The blog’s still on hold as I write my Rewild School book; however, here are three books keeping me abundantly optimistic about the future:
- Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence by James Bridle
- More From Less: The surprising story of how we learned to prosper using fewer resources – and what happens next by Andrew McAfee
- Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
Thanks so much. And, have a great day! – shawn
