Cool Mind Warm Heart

I Am All The People I Ever Met

 

“Who am I, you ask?  I don’t know, my friend.  I am all the languages I ever spoke, I am all the places I ever lived, I am all the people I ever met, I am all the women I ever loved, I am all the writers I ever read; I am all my ancestors – but at least they had the decency of never thinking of themselves as writers.  Who am I, you ask?  I don’t know, my friend; I don’t even know who is writing this page.”

— Jorge Luis Borges

The Light of Creation

 The Light of Creation Burns in Every Heart

Who are we, not to shine?

Grace and Gravitation

The bird attained whatever grace its shape possesses not as a result of the mere desire for flight, but because it had to fly in air, against gravitation.
~ T. E. Hulme

REMOVING YOUR BEAN FROM YOUR SIT-UPON

Think back about 12,000 years. 

Had Ben and Jerry’s been around, you can bet they’d have created a flavor the likes of “Glacier Granite Swirl.”  After all, the chief topic of discussion in those days was the block of ice two miles high that covered all of North America from the Arctic Circle to Pennsylvania.  (The tallest mountain in Vermont today is just shy of 4400 feet, so this glacier was over twice that high.)  Nothing stands still and a glacier is no exception.  On its underside, the friction created by its weight and movement reshaped a whole bunch of rock. 

You ask: What does this have to do with with the meaning of life? 

Corky Burr and the Keepers of Awe

[a story for thanksgiving]

Thirteen words that shape the world.

His name is Corky Burr, age mid-sixties by my calculations.  He and I were high school classmates.  I don’t believe our paths have crossed since, and we really didn’t know each other well then.  I have no memories of him, just a single impression: a small sparkle of kindness.  By “small” I mean his physical size, not quality of light.  Recently we became Facebook friends, which, as millions of us know, means mostly we get to glimpse at whatever sliver of a person’s life they wish to share with their Facebook companions.  The very first statement of Corky’s I was privileged to read was this: “I have 16 more days before I marry the love of my life.”

Aiming

“...in art, you never hit what you’re aiming at, but the difference may not be downward.”

~ Robert Kulicke, innovative frame maker about the painter Albert York, and surely applies to all of life.

The Spirit of You

Here’s a rewarding way to spend every minute, whether as an individual or an institution.  Be on the lookout for the “spirit of you,” the spirit of who you really are, whenever and however it may appear.  A joke, a song, a photograph, a pizza, the caress of a shirt on your skin, a gracious memo, the way someone rakes the lawn or walks their dog––every smidgen of existence is a potential expression of that distinct vibration of beauty that is you. 

Maybe all there is to creating a healthy life or a healthy enterprise is identifying the spirit of our true self, and doing our best to make choices hand-in-hand with that spirit.  And the more open we are to discovering (or tripping over) that spirit in the world around us, the easier it is to spot when we look within.

...Vermont sunlight in September, Cirque du Soleil’s collaboration with the Beatles, the architecture of Antonio Gaudi, the part of a clam shell that forms a heart with wings, offerings by crazy quilt artist Allison Aller....

My heart smiles, “Hey, that’s me.”