Weekly Reading

The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things, I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, crow voice, frog voice; now, he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever, which has nevertheless always been, like a sharp iron hoof, at the center of my mind. One or two things are all you need to travel over the blue pond, over the deep roughage of the trees and through the stiff flowers of lightning — some deep memory of pleasure, some cutting knowledge of pain. But to lift the hoof! For that you need an idea. For years and years I struggled just to love my life. And thenthe butterflyrose, weightless, in the wind.“Don’t love your life too much,” it said,and vanished into the world.
~Mary Oliver