All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.
Quotations
A Ring of Endless Light
Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.
CORALINE
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
THE DAY YOU BEGIN
There will be times when you walk into a room and no one there is quite like you... until the day you begin to share your stories. And all at once, in the room where no one else is quite like you, the world opens itself up a little wider to make some space for you.
BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE
There ain't no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.
It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere.
THE GIVER
The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.
ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY
There are things you can't back down on, things you gotta take a stand on. But it's up to you to decide what them things are.
BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA
You never know ahead of time what something's really going to be like.
Read the books they don't want you to. That's where the good stuff is.
MISS RUMPHIUS
You must do something to make the world more beautiful.
As children we did not grow up steadily, one day at a time. Occasionally, we would leap forward. Getting separated from our mother in the supermarket and—holding panic at bay—finding her on our own could make us instantly feel a year older. It is the same way we felt when we rode off alone on a bicycle for the first time.
While most of these experiences left me exhilarated, there was one leap forward that produced less welcome emotions. When I was eight years old I began to consider the possibility that Santa Claus was not real. Embracing this suspicion made me feel grown up, very suddenly and also very unhappily. Leaving behind a belief in Santa meant I would never again experience the enchantment that accompanied the days leading up to Christmas. The exquisite, almost unbearable anticipation of a fairy tale coming to life, a fairy tale that included me, would be gone forever.
This didn't feel like growing up. This felt like losing something—like being thrown out of the land of miracles and hearing the gates close behind me.
I wanted back in. Fortunately, the Polar Express pulled up to my house that Christmas, taking me on a trip that did lead me back. There is a seat on the train for you.
Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today!
THE READ-ALOUD FAMILY
A good story gives shape to the human experience and touches us in our innermost places. It picks us up right where we are and leaves us somewhere else — changed, transformed, more awake and alive and aware.
OF OTHER WORLDS
No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.
Fall seven times and stand up eight.
WRESTLING THE LIGHT
To wrestle with, and for, the light, for some meaning in life, is always a way of being in the presence of God.
BREATHING THE WATER
A voice from the dark called out,
'The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.'
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can't be imagined before it is made,
can't be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
'The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.'
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can't be imagined before it is made,
can't be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
One Minute Wisdom
The Master always left you to grow at your own pace. He was never known to "push." He explained this with the following parable:
"A man once saw a butterfly
struggling to emerge from
its cocoon, too slowly
for his taste, so he began
to blow on it gently. The
warmth of his breath speeded
up the process all right. But
what emerged was not a butterfly
but a creature with mangled
wings.
"In growth," the Master concluded, "you cannot speed the process up. All you can do is abort it."
"A man once saw a butterfly
struggling to emerge from
its cocoon, too slowly
for his taste, so he began
to blow on it gently. The
warmth of his breath speeded
up the process all right. But
what emerged was not a butterfly
but a creature with mangled
wings.
"In growth," the Master concluded, "you cannot speed the process up. All you can do is abort it."
One Minute Wisdom
A man traversed land and sea to check for himself the Master's extraordinary fame. "What miracles has your Master worked?" he said to a disciple. "Well, there are miracles and miracles. In your land it is regarded as a miracle if God does someone's will. In our country it is regarded as a miracle if someone does The will of God."
It always seems impossible until it's done.
Courage doesn't always roar.
God is with those who persevere.
BEYOND WITHIN
Not to give up under any circumstances should be the motto of our life: I shall try again and again, and I am bound to succeed. There will be obstacles, but I have to defy the obstacles.
Great works are perseverance.
MOVING DAY
We carried our grief
to the ocean's edge,
sat quiet in the sand;
the sorrows softened
as the waves washed
over them and the
brilliance of the
morning sun upon
the shimmering waters
filled our hearts
with wonder.
to the ocean's edge,
sat quiet in the sand;
the sorrows softened
as the waves washed
over them and the
brilliance of the
morning sun upon
the shimmering waters
filled our hearts
with wonder.
THE NAKED NOW
Love is what we long for and were created for—in fact love is what we are as an outpouring from God—but suffering often seems to be our opening to that need, that desire, and that identity. Love and suffering are the main portals that open up the mind space and the heart space (either can come first), breaking us into breadth, and depth and communion.
OPEN WIDE MY HEART
It does seem a strange thing to count suffering as joy, yet there's a truth here in that suffering helps to build one's character. Some of the most beautiful people I know are those who have passed through the flames and come out strengthened. If it happens to clay, why shouldn't it happen to us.
THE MONASTERY OF THE HEART
We become better at something in ourselves—more skilled, more creative, more effective—when we work. We discover that, indeed, we are good for something. Good work is, at the time, its own kind of asceticism. It needs no symbolic rituals or contrived penances.
The very act of continuing something until we succeed at it is soul-searing, life-changing enough... It makes us equal partners with the rest of the human race in this one common endeavor to grow the globe to wholeness. Good work is our gift to the future. It is what we leave behind—our persistence, our precision, our commitment, our fidelity to the smallest and meanest of tasks that will change the mind of generations to come about our sacred obligation to bear our share of the holy-making enterprise that is work.
VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER
There seemed no end to the lilies. Day after day from all those miles and leagues of flowers there rose a smell which Lucy found it very hard to describe; sweet—yes, but not at all sleepy or overpowering, a fresh, wild, lonely smell that seemed to get into your brain and make you feel that you could go up mountains at a run or wrestle with an elephant. She and Caspian said to one another, "I feel that I can't stand much more of this, yet I don't want it to stop".
I AM INTELLIGENT
When children know their differences will be supported by you saying you will never stop trying ways to help them find their very best voice, their fears rest.
It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
NON-VIOLENCE IN PEACE AND WAR
Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
Pour forth your strength into my heart
That I might stand strong!
Encircle with healing love those
Who persecute me through fear!
And say to my soul,
"I am with you always."
That I might stand strong!
Encircle with healing love those
Who persecute me through fear!
And say to my soul,
"I am with you always."
Peace is a day-to-day problem, the product of a multitude of events and judgements. Peace is not an 'is' it is a 'becoming.'
We would like to thank you, our amazing Friends of Silence, for supporting the resilience of our humble ministry. In February we made an additional appeal so that we could continue to send the Letter in these difficult times. Your response was generous, heartfelt, and astonishing. We are deeply grateful.
Meditations and Mandalas
Let us sing to the Creator of the cosmos,
to the divine power of love!
When we look at the wondrous display
of the heavens,
at the Earth with its infinite
variety of life,
Who are we that You love us, that You
rejoice in our being;
that You trust us to care for creation
in all its splendor,
inviting us to become co-creators
with You?
Let us celebrate the mystery of life!
Let us commit our lives to
the Divine Plan!
to the divine power of love!
When we look at the wondrous display
of the heavens,
at the Earth with its infinite
variety of life,
Who are we that You love us, that You
rejoice in our being;
that You trust us to care for creation
in all its splendor,
inviting us to become co-creators
with You?
Let us celebrate the mystery of life!
Let us commit our lives to
the Divine Plan!
THE GRAND ARRAY
Straight up away from this road,
Away from the fitted particles of frost
Coating the hull of each chick pea,
And the stiff archer bug making its way
In the morning dark, toe hair by toe hair,
Up the stem of the trillium,
Straight up through the sky above this road right now,
The galaxies of the Cygnus A cluster
Are colliding with each other in a massive swarm
Of interpenetrating and exploding catastrophes.
I try to remember that.
And even in the gold and purple pretense
Of evening, I make myself remember
That it would take 40,000 years full of gathering
Into leaf and dropping, full of pulp splitting
And the hard wrinkling of seed, of the rising up
Of wood fibers and the disintegration of forests,
Of this lake disappearing completely in the bodies
Of toad slush and duckweed rock,
40,000 years and the fastest thing we own,
To reach the one star nearest to us.
And when you speak to me like this,
I try to remember that the wood and cement walls
Of this room are being swept away now,
Molecule by molecule, in a slow and steady wind,
And nothing at all separates our bodies
From the vast emptiness expanding, and I know
We are sitting in our chairs
Discoursing in the middle of the blackness of space.
And when you look at me
I try to recall that at this moment
Somewhere millions of miles beyond the dimness
Of the sun, the comet Biela, speeding
In its rocks and ices, is just beginning to enter
The widest arc of its elliptical turn.
Away from the fitted particles of frost
Coating the hull of each chick pea,
And the stiff archer bug making its way
In the morning dark, toe hair by toe hair,
Up the stem of the trillium,
Straight up through the sky above this road right now,
The galaxies of the Cygnus A cluster
Are colliding with each other in a massive swarm
Of interpenetrating and exploding catastrophes.
I try to remember that.
And even in the gold and purple pretense
Of evening, I make myself remember
That it would take 40,000 years full of gathering
Into leaf and dropping, full of pulp splitting
And the hard wrinkling of seed, of the rising up
Of wood fibers and the disintegration of forests,
Of this lake disappearing completely in the bodies
Of toad slush and duckweed rock,
40,000 years and the fastest thing we own,
To reach the one star nearest to us.
And when you speak to me like this,
I try to remember that the wood and cement walls
Of this room are being swept away now,
Molecule by molecule, in a slow and steady wind,
And nothing at all separates our bodies
From the vast emptiness expanding, and I know
We are sitting in our chairs
Discoursing in the middle of the blackness of space.
And when you look at me
I try to recall that at this moment
Somewhere millions of miles beyond the dimness
Of the sun, the comet Biela, speeding
In its rocks and ices, is just beginning to enter
The widest arc of its elliptical turn.
Be helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
to gather us up.
So let us rather not be sure of anything...
Then miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally,
With tremendous eloquence,
Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,
We shall be a mighty kindness.
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
to gather us up.
So let us rather not be sure of anything...
Then miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally,
With tremendous eloquence,
Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,
We shall be a mighty kindness.
The Ink Dark Moon
Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
SHIFTING THE SILENCE
The universe makes a sound — is a sound. In the core of this sound there's a silence, a silence that creates that sound, which is not its opposite, but its inseparable soul... Silence is a flower, it opens up, dilates, extends its texture, can grow, mutate... It can watch other flowers grow and become what they are.
GIVEN SUGAR, GIVEN SALT: POEMS
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.
SWAN: POEMS AND PROSE POEMS
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate.
Give in to it.
There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be.
We are not wise, and not very often kind.
And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left.
Perhaps this is its way of fighting back,
that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world.
It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins.
Anyway, that's often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty.
Joy is not made to be a crumb.
Give in to it.
There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be.
We are not wise, and not very often kind.
And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left.
Perhaps this is its way of fighting back,
that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world.
It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins.
Anyway, that's often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty.
Joy is not made to be a crumb.
DREAM OF A COMMON LANGUAGE
My heart is moved by all I cannot save: So much has been destroyed. I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.
ORWELL'S ROSES
Trees are an invitation to think about time and to travel in it the way they do, by standing still and reaching out and down.
A New Harmony
We live in a moment of grace. Through the hedges of our divisions we are beginning to glimpse again the beauty of life's oneness. We are beginning to hear...the essential harmony that lies at the heart of the universe. And we are beginning to understand...that we will be well to the extent that we move back into relationship with one another, whether as individuals and families or as nations and species. The time is right. The time is desperately right.
The Burren is an extraordinary—and strange—place. Miles and miles of hills are covered in limestone, like the paving of some old gods...Here, wildflowers grow, sheep pick their way through, grasses wave, and stone walls are built by locals...To be in the Burren is to bear witness to the unexpected ways that the particularity of place opens you to the world.
A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES
It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery,
but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.
but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.