- Published on
"Your Heart Will Touch Everything it Meets" - acrylic on aluminum panel, 12 x 16. Available here and at Artfinder.
We've arrived at the final chapter in The One Life We're Given by Mark Nepo. Whether the chapter, Staying Tender and Resilient, is better than all the others or I am just reluctant to put the book down, I've underlined every sentence.
Before you panic and leave the blog page in fear of a million quotes, I think we can safely sift the chapter down to handfuls of words in which Nepo expresses his hopes for us, his own dear readers:
We've arrived at the final chapter in The One Life We're Given by Mark Nepo. Whether the chapter, Staying Tender and Resilient, is better than all the others or I am just reluctant to put the book down, I've underlined every sentence.
Before you panic and leave the blog page in fear of a million quotes, I think we can safely sift the chapter down to handfuls of words in which Nepo expresses his hopes for us, his own dear readers:
"...I hope you softly trip into unexpected moments of bareness, where the glow of your heart will touch everything it meets, and you can't help but remember how dear it is to be alive."
That's a heap load of whoa there. How many of us hope to trip into moments of bareness? Or allow our hearts to touch everything they meet? How to stay in that openness and vulnerability and to stop resisting where life wants to take us - that is the challenge. How to lean in when all of our instincts are to look away. How to listen to our pain and figure out what it is saying to us. Sharing our stories is a good way to lean in. Sometimes we learn something in the telling. Other times in the listening. And now and again, a story shared in a moment of vulnerability helps us softly trip into bareness together.
That's a heap load of whoa there. How many of us hope to trip into moments of bareness? Or allow our hearts to touch everything they meet? How to stay in that openness and vulnerability and to stop resisting where life wants to take us - that is the challenge. How to lean in when all of our instincts are to look away. How to listen to our pain and figure out what it is saying to us. Sharing our stories is a good way to lean in. Sometimes we learn something in the telling. Other times in the listening. And now and again, a story shared in a moment of vulnerability helps us softly trip into bareness together.
yes.
yes.
yes.
yes.
yes to everything in today's post.
yes to you.
I am taken too by your dear reader's comments, all very much on point.
Nepo, I'm happy to say ... has received his wish, your appreciation of being alive is obviously not only present, but refined and a pleasure to behold.
Noteworthy too that aluminum is one of our most recyclable materials, though I've not witnessed that to this extent before.