Slow Steps and Appropriate Thoughts, Episode 469
We celebrate nine years of Turning Towards Life with a conversation about the relationship between life's everyday demands and a deeper, more stable presence that we can rely upon.
We explore how remembering what lies beneath can help us to meet life's complexity as active participants, grounded in something mountainous and enduring that holds us no matter how turbulent our circumstances become.
Hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Our source for this week:
The Poet Dreams of the Mountain by Mary Oliver
Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountains, slowly, taking
The rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
Under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
That we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
And peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.”
Mary Oliver
Swan: Poems and Prose Poems
Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash