How better to go out than in gratitude

2011 was hard on my household. My lovely-lovely was diagnosed with renal failure and his father passed away--all in a few months. I had my first set of scary medical test results and then months later, an okay. Still, things took their toll. But the house is warm with life and love and I am here, waiting on the edge of my seat for 2012. No matter what those Mayans think.


Because 2011 has been rough on us all, but as Rilke says: Love the questions. Live the questions.
To 2012! Love and best wishes,
Sophia

Six Kinds of Gratitude

1
I'm someone's small boat,
far out at sea,
sailing from what has so long sustained me
toward what I don't know.

My joy is the sound
of the water purling around me,
but is it my hull
or the great ocean moving?

2
Are those flies I hear, or a trick of the wind,
faintly human voices,
or a whistle of breath
in the nose of my sleeping dog?

3
Without me there is no confusion.
Buddhas see no difference between
themselves and others; Angels,
between the living and the dead.

4
At last I've discovered
the secret of life:
If you don't leave
you can't come back.

5
Deep in the Earth there are pockets of light
that did not come from Heaven,
and yet they are the light of Heaven
deep inside the Earth.

6
This bird is the birdness of a bird.

—Dan Gerber, A Primer on Parallel Lives

And of course, Rainer. Always Rainer.

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions”

R.M. Rilke is the man!