wild geese

• you do not have to be good.
• tell me about despair, yours, and i will tell you mine. meanwhile the world goes on.
• 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.

the summer day

• i don't know exactly what a prayer is. i do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what i have been doing all day.

the journey

• one day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice
• there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world