Friday, January 9, 2009

Various and sundry...

First, a poem. One of my all time favorites by Mary Oliver:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


Beautiful, no?

Next, a discovery:

Omphalokepsis. Know what it is?

Contemplation of one's navel as an aid to meditation.

How great is that? Who on earth came up with that one? Someone was contemplating his or her belly-button one day and decided said action needed its own word! Hilarious.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

also, as you know, one of my all time favorite poems. That first line is such a necessary reminder to those of us overachieving, people-pleasing Libras, no? "you do not have to be good". Wish I could take that more to heart sometimes.

Anonymous said...

Hello Julie. Thank you for this and the tag for contemplating your belly button. However simple the thought it can't be trite to follow a life so clearly from the heart- on "the exposed plain"... Scary, hard and ultimately as joyful as staring down your belly button or entering a room just because. Love to you. Hope ypu're well-
L