“Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?”

~ Tony Hoagland

Practice in Life, See Out, Feel InDaron LarsonDecember 22, 2019Tony Hoagland, poetry, mundane, life, time, attention, paying attentionComment

Something Slower, But More Tangible

“Can we tell ourselves when we need to walk away from chatter, turn it off entirely for half a day, or a full day, or a whole weekend, ease into a realm of something slower, but more tangible?

Can we go outside and listen?"

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Hear Out, Hear In, EquanimityDaron LarsonSeptember 20, 2018poetry, Naomi Shihab Nye, listening, time, life, attentionComment

All We Need to Know about Wanting

"Every living thing
has preferences."

~ Jim Dollar

Daron LarsonApril 17, 2018Jim Dollar, poetry, yearning, wanting, life, practice, contemplative, contemplation, faith, quietComment

What You Missed

"Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer."

~ Brad Aaron Modlin

Daron LarsonSeptember 17, 2017Brad Aaron Modlin, poetry, growing up, learning, life, paying attention, awareness, self-awareness, memory, FOMOComment

My Life is an Open Book

"My life is an open book. It lies here
on a glass tabletop, its pages shamelessly exposed,
outspread like a bird with hundreds of thin paper wings.

It is a biography, needless to say,
and I am reading and writing it simultaneously
in a language troublesome and private."

~ Billy Collins

Practice in LifeDaron LarsonJune 11, 2017poetry, Billy Collins, narrative, life, story, impermanence, self, noticing, paying attention, self/other, connectionComment

I Want To Be Astonished

"i want to feel tectonic shifts.
i want to be. i want to be astonished."

~ Sleeping at Last

Daron LarsonApril 7, 2017wonder, life, senses, taste, waking up, shadow, awareness, attention, music, music video, Sleeping At LastComment

Turn Toward the Problems

"In my experience, there’s just no substitute for actually going and seeing things."

~ Matt Damon

Practice in Life, MagnanimityDaron LarsonJune 24, 2016Matt Damon, commencement, actors, wisdom, life, growing up, education, self/otherComment

Little Victories

I enjoyed every minute of listening to Jason Gay describe what it feels like to stumble into regular adulthood. It felt like having a long conversation with a friend who makes you laugh, not by trying to be funny, but simply by describing ordinary life in all its messiness.

Daron LarsonFebruary 14, 2016Jason Gay, life, illness, griefComment

A Work In Progress

We’re nothing less than a work in progress,
sacred text on post it notes.

Daron LarsonDecember 18, 2015life, waking up, senses, Sleeping At Last, wonder Comment

Constant State of Unrest

The universe began with our eyes closed.

Beginning, See OutDaron LarsonSeptember 7, 2015Sleeping At Last, music, change, impermanence, history, expansion/contraction, breath, lifeComment

If You Embrace It, It Will Teach You

"Healing comes in many guises. We're healed by just the touch of a friend. We're healed by the hug of a child. And healing does not imply that your life is suddenly going to lose all of the struggle, all of the challenge. What it does instead is it strengthens us for what is next. But to be open to healing means to be vulnerable. And I think if you look at me, you know I'm what they would call a vulnerable adult. The cat doesn't even listen to me here. I have no real sense of control anymore."

~ Bruce Kramer

Equanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonApril 25, 2015Bruce Kramer, life, death, body, illness, medicine, On Being, frustration, struggle, suffering, yoga, relationshipsComment

The Only Calibration that Counts

"That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember."

~ Ted Hughes

Magnanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonApril 14, 2015Ted Hughes, childhood, self, identity, growing up, life, surprise, fear, suffering, emotion, connection, relationships, poetsComment

How Does It Feel to Be You?

"The only way we’ll ever know what it’s like to be you is if you work your best at being you as often as you can, and keep reminding yourself: That’s where home is."

~ Bill Murray

Daron LarsonMarch 16, 2015Bill Murray, home, life, self, paying attention, wisdomComment

All Along

nodus tollens

n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn't make sense to you anymore

Clarity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonMarch 15, 2015narrative, self, meaning, story, life, memory, words, Dictionary of Obscure SorrowsComment

We Impose Order

"Structure, it's all imposed. We impose order and narrative on everything in order to understand it. Otherwise, there's nothing but chaos."

~ Julianne Moore

Daron LarsonFebruary 23, 2015Julianne Moore, life, actors, family, narrativeComment

Why Not Get Started

I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you're in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

~ Mary Oliver

Practice in LifeDaron LarsonFebruary 7, 2015Mary Oliver, poetry, belonging, life, death, mortality, time, memento moriComment

Shelter

May this house shelter your life.
When you come home here,
May all the weight of the world
Fall from your shoulders.

~ John O'Donohue

Daron LarsonJanuary 30, 2015John O'Donohue, poetry, home, blessing, safety, lifeComment

This Primal Commitment

What happens when, just for a moment, we stay with our pain, our fear, our doubt, our discomfort, our grief, our broken heart, even our numbness, without trying to change it, or fix it, or numb ourselves to it, or get rid of it in any way? What happens when, even when we feel like leaving, abandoning the moment for the promise of a future salvation, we stay, sitting with the raw, unfiltered, boundlessly alive life-energy that is simply trying to express right now?

~ Jeff Foster

Feel In, Clarity, Equanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonNovember 18, 2014Jeff Foster, suffering, emotions, feeling, life, resistance, uncertainty, grief, death, doubt, discomfortComment

Two Inches Away

"The only way I've found to try to keep my balance in a globe permanently on the move—and ever more cluttered with stuff—is to step out of the world on a regular basis, and to step back from my life, so as to see what's truly inside them. Otherwise, I can feel I'm standing two inches away from a vast and constantly shifting canvas, terminally unable to make out the larger picture."

~ Pico Iyer

Clarity, Equanimity, Practice in Stillness, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonNovember 7, 2014Pico Iyer, stillness, paying attention, present, lifeComment

Let Me Go

"When I close a book / I open life...I learned about life / from life itself"

~ Pablo Neruda

Daron LarsonNovember 3, 2014Pablo Neruda, poem, poetry, books, reading, learning, life, Anselm KieferComment

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