We are all wounded inside in some way or other. We all carry unhappiness within us 
for some reason or other. Which is why we need a little gentleness and healing from 
one another. Healing in words, healing beyond words. Like gestures. Warm gestures.
Like friendship, which will always be a mystery. Like a smile, which someone 
described as the shortest distance between two people.   ~Ben Okri

From my sky to your sky,
may we stitch together this tattered,
ever-beautiful world
with more listening and less shouting,
more kindness and less hate,
more bread and no bombs,
more hope and less cynicism,
more reality and fewer lies,
more resources and less deprivation
and always, always, more love.
May blessings circle one and all in the New Year.

We cannot choose what is arising in any given moment: the unexpected experiences or conditions, the spontaneous ‘felt sense’ in the body, or related emotions and thoughts. However, we can choose how we respond. Within this awareness, lies freedom. 

Move your body.
Ignite your senses.
Nurture your intellect.
Trust your intuition.
Honor your heart.
Use your voice.

Look to the sky
for an ever-changing story
told in clouds and colors
rising, shape-shifting, setting
in textured moods,
flowing on blue canvas.

See today’s tale-
burgeoning swaths
of dark charcoal
all heavy-hearted,
but for the slim edges
of white,
one insistent wedge
of blue
hope.

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing . . .

Galway Kinnell, excerpt from Saint Francis and The Sow