“You can’t stop time. You can’t capture light. You can only turn your face up and let it rain down.” – Kim Edwards (The Memory Keeper’s Daughter)
Things have been busy, and my mind as of late has been in a million places at once. That’s the joy of being at pre-service training, of being at the end of my service, of being in the few months leading up to great adventures and great unknowns… What to do? Embrace it, turn my face to the sky, see it all as it passes, feel it from skin to soul.
“Everything changed the day she figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life.” – Brian Andreas
Deep breaths, day by day, embrace the ups and downs, embrace the others who also feel them, and recognize that all important things will come to pass with a little more patience and a little less worry.
I’ve also felt of late like a feather blown between worlds, and between lives, to observe the different corners of human experience. People can see their corners in so many ways, with varying levels of optimism. Some face their corners, see the intricacies, the cracks in the surface, the play of shadows. Others look out from their corners, see the world from their specific perspective, whatever that may be.
At times you are led away from yourself, and while that can be a valuable thing, and others appreciate your willingness to see from their perspective, it can take some work to find the ground again. I’ve been working to find my ground, to feel like myself again. Luckily, I know the things that can bring me there.
“It’s worth making time to find the things that really stir your soul. That’s what makes you really feel alive.” – Roy T. Bennett
So what have I been up to this past week? (Besides regular work at the office…) Puzzles and music, and also reading and writing. Whenever I am able to look at some of my favorite quotes and passages written through the ages, and to look back at the words I have written as well, I feel a better sense of myself in the world.
I just finished reading The Master by Colm Toibin – a fictional account of the life and relationships of the writer Henry James. At the end of the book, Henry James is talking about the next stories he wishes to write. He explains the basic plots, and is then asked what the moral of the stories will be. I loved the response:
“The moral is… that life is a mystery and that only sentences are beautiful.”
Of all the art forms I think I appreciate words the most. Words can weave worlds, and every world weaved is different in the imagination of every individual. That is magic. That is mystery. That is what stirs my soul. That is what I find most important in life. That is what I feel when I turn my face up and let it rain down…
marks in the sand 
Yeassss 🙌🏽🙌🏽