Cherry Season

“Question four: What book would you give to every child?
Answer: I wouldn’t give them a book. Books are part of the problem: this strange belief that a tree has nothing to say until it is murdered, its flesh pulped, and then (human) people stain this flesh with words. I would take children outside and put them face to face with chipmunks, dragonflies, tadpoles, hummingbirds, stones, rivers, trees, crawdads.
That said, if you’re going to force me to give them a book, it would be The Wind In The Willows, which I hope would remind them to go outside.”
― Derrick Jensen

These Two

“Receive the children in reverence; educate them in love; let them go forth in freedom.”

– Rudolf Steiner

Strawberry Season

"What is beauty but something is responded to with emotion? Courage, at least, is partly emotional. All the splendour of life. But if the best of life is, in fact, emotional, then one wanted the highest, the purest emotions: and that meant joy. Joy was the highest. How did one find joy? In books it was found in love– a great love… So if he wanted the heights of joy, he must have it, if he could find it, in great love. But in the books again, great joy through love always seemed go hand in hand with frightful pain. Still, he thought, looking out across the meadow, still, the joy would be worth the pain– if indeed, they went together. If there were a choice– and he suspected there was– a choice between, on the one hand, the hights and the depths and, on the other hand, some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now chose the heights and the depths.
Since then the years have gone by and he– had he not had what he chose that day in the meadow? He had had the love. And the joy– what joy it had been! And the sorrow. He had had– was having– all the sorrow there was. And yet, the joy was worth the pain. Even now he re-affirmed that long-past choice.”
― Sheldon Vanauken

All the Love

“Some people meet the way the sky meets the earth, inevitably, and there is no stopping or holding back their love. It exists in a finished world, beyond the reach of common sense.”
― Louise Erdrich

Courage

“Happiness is a form of courage.”  –George Holbrook Jackson

Happiness

“Her spirit flew out into the night
And the sky reached down
And drew her up,
And she was filled with light…
And she is happy.”
― Audrey Niffenegger

Warm Nights

“And when you get down to it, Lily, that is the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love but to persist in love.”
― Sue Monk Kidd

Guest List

“It has been a beautiful fight. Still is.”
- Charles Bukowski

Jen’s Annual Pig Roast: Part Two

"A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves."
— Wendell Berry

One Month

“To try to be brave is to be brave.”
― George MacDonald