From Fleurs to Flourishing

“If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.”

(This is purportedly from Saadi’s Golestan, which means The Rose Garden. I’ve not been able to verify it, but it speaks to me today.)

Random Connections

I just stumbled upon this quotation and saved it:

“No cow’s like a horse, and no horse like a cow. That’s one similarity, anyhow.”
—Piet Hein

It fits with the “every creature’s an individual” philosophy that’s been on my mind. Then, forgetting about it, the next page I opened on the Web displayed this photo:


How perfect is that? So I had to share it.

It’s Shreve Stockton, author of The Daily Coyote: A Story of Love, Survival, and Trust in the Wilds of Wyoming and creator of Honey Rock Dawn. Beneath the photo is a beautiful story about one day near her ranch in Wyoming—births and deaths, difficult decisions and Good Samaritans, horses and cows, knowledge and intuition all intersecting and building something new. Please read it. It will lift your spirits.

Seeking Quiet Midst Chaos

I started reading Madeleine L’Engle’s A Circle of Quiet largely because I’ve been searching for a pocket of quiet in my own life. Figured I might pick up a few pointers from am author of 50+ books, mother and caregiver to a fluctuating number of people, wife to a Broadway actor, and resident of a town in which she would always be regarded as a newcomer. Plus, Jean Kerr’s testimonial on the back cover spoke to me: “I know it will give great consolation to ordinary people who sometimes wonder why they bother to get out of bed in the morning.”

Those of you familiar with A Circle of Quiet know that it was first published a lifetime ago—in 1972. But I have to tell you that it holds up. Sure, there are some words that reference the era—kids glued to their transistor radios, for instance, and people fighting for change by fighting the Establishment—but substitute today’s versions of those words and the writing remains fresh and relevant.

Readers learn on the first page of the book that L’Engle’s home contains more than 3,000 books. Of course, this draws my interest. But it’s on the second page that I get really hooked:

“Vacuum cleaners are simply something more for me to trip over … . The sight of a meal’s worth of dirty dishes, pots, and pans makes me want to run in the other direction. Every so often I need OUT; something will throw me into total disproportion, and I have to get away from everybody—away from all these people I love most in the world—in order to regain a sense of proportion.”

Ah. Here was someone like me. L’Engle wrote Circle after logging 50+ years of life. Having reached that point myself, Circle offers more to me now, I believe, than it would have 20 years ago.

I’m more than halfway through the book and have flagged one passage after another that holds meaning for me. Even when I don’t share the same view as L’Engle, I do puzzle over the same subject. This is more than I expected to get out of A Circle of Quiet, which may exempt it from my Read-and-Release program. At least for a while, anyway.

[Art: The Intruder by Andrew Wyeth.]