"Ing": gettING through...

Say"ING" it well:

"Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride in knowing that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place."

--Unknown

"Don't ever let someone tell you that you can't do something. Not even me. You got a dream, you gotta protect it. When people can't do something themselves, they're gonna tell you that you can't do it. You want something, go get it. Period."

--Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happiness

"And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we are always crying for one day or one year to come back--if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and these are that day."

--C.S. Lewis from Out of the Silent Planet.

"Rest in the unforced rhythms of grace."

--Unknown

“I know it seems like a lot, but I really only do one thing. I read books. I write books. I teach books. I think about books. It’s one job.”

--Toni Morrison

"No other job in the world could possibly dispossess one so completely as this job of teaching. You could stand all day in a laundry, for instance, still in possession of your mind. But this teaching utterly obliterates you. It cuts right into your being: essentially, it takes over your spirit. It drags it out from where it would hide. "

--Sylvia Ashton-Warner

"Knitting is very conducive to thought. It is nice to knit a while, put down the needles, write a while, then take up the sock again. "

--Dorothy Day

"For people allergic to wool, one's heart can only bleed."

--Elizabeth Zimmerman

To be of use

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who stand in the line and haul in their places,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine and oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

--Marge Piercy

"Ing"

Monday, May 2, 2011

gettING through...

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