On the pavement a group of schoolchildren was walking past the
driveway with their teacher. I noticed these young children
crossing and suddenly I saw them in a way I have never seen human
beings before or since. They were so full of light I could
hardly 1ook, and on each child's chest where the heart is, a huge
radiance like the sun was shining. Each little child had this
dynamic, brilliant light, this radiant sun, ín the center of
their being. The experience of the líght, its brillíance and
energy, was beautiful and overwhelming. Later I came to
realize that what I saw is the true nature of human beings —
we are dynamic, luminous creatures of light.
~ from THE FACE BEFORE I WAS BORN by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
You work with what you are given —
today I am blessed, today I am given luck.
It takes the shape of a dozen ripening fruit trees,
a curtain of pole beans, a thicket of berries.
It takes the shape of a dozen empty hours.
In them is neither love nor love's muster of losses,
in them there is no chance for harm or for good.
Does even my humanness matter?
A bear would be equally happy, this August day,
fat on the simple sweetness plucked between thorns.
There are some who may think, "How pitiful, how lonely."
Other must murmur, "How lazy."
I agree with them all: pitiful, lonely, lazy.
Lost to the earth and to heaven,
thoroughly drunk on its whiskeys, I wander my kingdom.
~ Jane Hirshfield, "August Day" in GIVEN SUGAR, GIVEN SALT: 1951-1967
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.
~ Jane Hirshfield from "Optimism" in GIVEN SUGAR, GIVEN SALT: POEMS
