"CONSTANT TOIL IS THE LAW OF ART, AS IT IS OF LIFE"

If an artist does not spring to his work as a soldier to the breach, if once within the crater he does not labour as a miner buried in the earth, if he contemplates his difficulties instead of conquering them one by one, the work remains unacheived, production becomes impossible, and the artist assists in the suicide of his own talent...The solution of the problem can be found only through incessant and sustained work...true artists, true poets, generate and give birth today, tomorrow, ever.  From this habit of labour results a ceaseless comprehension of difficulties which keep them in communion with the muse and her creative forces.

-  Balzac

"Your work is unbeautiful, alright, let it be unbeautiful.  It will grieve you, but it must not discourage you.  Nature demands a certain devotion, and she demands a period of struggling with her...It is the experience and hard work of every day which alone will ripen in the long run and allow one to do something truer and more complete...You will not always do well, but the days you least expect it, you will do that which holds its own with the work of those who have gone before."

- Van Gogh

"NO WOMAN SHOULD BE SHAMEFACED IN ATTEMPTING THROUGH HER WORK TO GIVE BACK TO THE WORLD A PORTION OF IT'S LOST HEART..."

"One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting their bad advice -
though the whole house began to tremble
and you felt the old tug at your ankles.
'Mend my life!'
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with it's stiff fingers
at the very foundations -
though their melancholy was terrible.
It was already late enough,
and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save."

- from "The Journey" in Dream Work by  MaryOliver,  The Atlantic Monthly Press

TOTAL ACCEPTANCE

"It costs so much to be a full human being, that there are very few who have the enlightenment or courage to pay the price.  One has to abandon altogether the search for security and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover.  One has to accept pain as a condition of existence.  One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing.  One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying."

- from The Shoes of the Fisherman

Learning

Life has taught me
To be a cautious traveller
Trusting enough to dream
Impossible dreams
And yet wise enough
To anticipate disappointment
And find the means
To overcome defeat.

Ethel Johnson

"A well appeared before me in my wilderness,
And freedom came to bring me out of slavery,
And hope appeared before me out of hopelessness,
And life rose up before me from the place of death.
And the God of Hagar waits for you in the place of your despair,
To lead you to a land of hope that you never knew was there...
And the God of vision will open your eyes,
And the well will appear in your wilderness,
And the hope will appear out of hopelessness,
And your life will begin again."

...Ken Medema

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

"it is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out where the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better.  the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither defeat or victory."

Theodore roosevelt

(P.S.  "great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds...")

Our deepest fear is not that we're inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous.  Actually, who are you not to be?  You're playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.  As we let our light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear our presence automatically liberates others.

Nelson Mandel

In Blackwater Woods
by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinammon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

It is important that we be strengthened by the wisdom of our grievings. The scientists may tinker, the politicians may instruct us in the various ploys of unconsciousness, the physicians may delay death awhile with yet another cure, but, until each
individual maintains a responsible relationship to his or her own losses and changes, there will be no such thing as a hopeful future. For, as in the Taoist description of the wheel in terms of the strong, empty spaces between the spokes, one's future depends not only on the visible spokes of the present, but also on those invisible elements from the past, those things we are missing, are grieving for, have forgotten and left behind, so that they may be recovered.

Tess Gallagher

Without words, it comes. And suddenly, sharply, one is aware of being separated from every person on one's earth and every object, and from the beginning of things and from the future and even, a little, from one's self. A moment before one was happily playing; the world was round and friendly. Now at one's feet there are chasms that had been invisible until this moment. And one knows, and never remembers how it was learned, that there will always be chasms, and across the chasms will always be those one loves.

Lillian Smith

Refuse to fall down
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down,
lift your heart toward heaven,
and like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled,
and it will be filled.
You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no on can keep you
from lifting your heart
toward heaven –
only you.
It is in the middle of misery
that so much becomes clear.
The one who says nothing good
came of this,
is not yet listening.

C.P. Estes

“You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality.”

Florida Scott Maxwell

“It’s not the outside things that deform you, it’s the choices you make. The only thing you can do is love, because it is the only thing that leaves light inside you, instead of total, obliterating darkness…”

Rian Malan

Only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth, and that is not speaking it.

Naomi Wolf

You don’t create your mission in life – you detect it.

Viktor Frankl

No one tests the depths of a river with both feet.

Ashanti Proverb

If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.

“It seems to me that we are charcoal ready to be kindled, and that Holy Communion [Creativity] is entirely suited to set us on fire. But when the charcoal is kindled only on the surface, as soon as it is set aside, it is extinguished. On the contrary, that which is fired all the way to the center is not extinguished, but consumed.”

Sister Marguerite Bourgeoys

“Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.”

Isak Dinensen

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

Winston Churchill

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony.” ~ Gandhi

“The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.” ~ Elie Wiesel

”It’s a spiritual paradox: with faith comes doubt. A little questioning now and then can actually strengthen your beliefs. Don’t be afraid of self examination.”

Oprah

“Faith is nothing but a living, wide-awake consciousness of God within.”

Ghandhi

“That is faith for you. It’s belief even when the gods don’t deliver.”

Louise Erdrich

“Kindness is the mark of faith; and whoever has not kindness, has not faith.”

Muhammad

“The world is a wondrous place, and it cannot be diminished by anything except fear, and by caring more for things than for one another.”

Rob. F. Allen

"Use every letter you write, every conversation you have, every meeting you attend, to express your fundamental beliefs and dreams. Affirm to others the vision of the world you want. You are a free, immensely powerful source of life and goodness. Affirm it. Spread it. Radiate it. Think day and night about it and you will see a miracle happen: the greatness of our own life.”

Robert Muller, Former Assistant Secretary General, United Nations

Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk

From:  Journey to Wholeness

I would start at the beginning if I knew where the beginning was, but I do not know for sure.  I only suspect that it all starts with the first deep wound, and after that, like a person who limps or cradles their withered arm close to their side, we favor the place where the knife went in.

Each of us carries with us an inner knowledge about the way we have been and will be betrayed:  so there are those who believe we make it happen out of our unrest.  But maybe it is simply that great needs cause great fears, and great fears keep us needful long into the night.

There are two fears really.  The original wound from way back when, and the fear of giving up our defenses and having to face the wild arrows of pain, so the fear becomes a roadblock that we serve and maintain.  Which is why those who cannot trust enough make sure they will not be trusted, and those who fear most to be orphaned, widowed, or worthless, find themselves so again and again.

Emotions rule all of us, even those who think they don’t, and the most ruled are those who’ve had to develop a large rational scaffolding to support their fears.  Fears fight war and conquer worlds, build temples and bank accounts, get married and raise kids, but those who fear are always planning their defenses and their retreat, never living life, just escaping, never loving, only weeping.

We all carry cross-hatching of a thousand wounds.  The wounds of childhood, still bleeding like the signs of the stigmata.  The wound of adolescence, still stinging with dull remembered pain.  The bitter wounds of adult failure, or soured loves and lost dreams.

How to make them all go away?  How to become brave and young again?  How to wipe the slate clean and reenter the world like a tabula rasa, trusting and trustworthy again?  I wish I knew.

I only know the answer doesn’t lie in learning how to protect yourself from life.  It lies in learning how to strengthen yourself so you can let a bit more of it in.

"At Laguna, when someone dies, you don't 'get over it' by forgetting; you 'get over it' by remembering, and by remembering you are aware that no person is ever truly lost or gone once they have been in our lives and loved us, as we have loved them.."

~ Leslie Marmon Silko, poet/novelist, The Delicacy and Strength of Lace (Graywolf Press)

Kenyon, Jane 1947 – 1995

“Let Evening Come”

Let the light of late afternoon
Shine through chinks in the barn, moving
Up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
As a woman takes up her needles
And her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
In long grass. Let the stars appear
And the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
Go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
In the oats, to air in the lung
Let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
Be afraid. God does not leave us
Comfortless, so let evening come.

(Jane Kenyon was a major American poet whose works are collected in the volume Otherwise published by Graywolf Press, Minneapolis. She lived and wrote in New Hampshire with her husband, the poet Donald Hall, whose volume Without consists of letters to and about Jane in the year after her early death from leukemia.

From an interview with Bill Moyers:
Moyers: How did you come to write ‘Let Evening Come’?
Kenyon: That poem was given to me.
Moyers: By?
Kenyon: The muse, the Holy Ghost. I had written all the other poems in the book in which it appears and I knew that it was a very sober book. I felt it needed something redeeming. I went upstairs one day with the purpose of writing something redeeming, which is not the way to write, but this just fell out. I really didn’t have to struggle with it. There are things in this life that we must endure which are all but unendurable, and yet I feel that there is a great goodness. )