The Universe Project

“Someone left the gate open..”

Capturing sunlight

Peace every morning under my oak tree

Nurture the Mood of Dawn

“Considering a day’s activities, first get up early, wash and groom yourself, dress properly, including accessories, and sit quietly with your hands folded, making your appearance and manner correct. Nurture the mood of dawn, and contemplate the principle of heaven and earth ceaselessly producing life… Above all, you should observe subtle impulses. When a man of mettle is at home, if he is circumspect even in solitude, then he will have a calm conscience. He does not neglect manners - whether in public, or out of sight. Here his mind is broad, here his body is robust, here his attention is focused; his will has a definite direction, and no ideas of license or indulgence occur to him.”

- From Shidō (The Way of the Knight), Yamaga Soko  

via Lucian James Fearless Strategies No 3

ANTIDOTES TO FEAR OF DEATH by Rebecca Elson

Sometimes as an antidote To fear of death, I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back, I suck them from the quenching dark Til they are all, all inside me, Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself Into a universe still young, Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space, The light of all the not yet stars Drifting like a bright mist, And all of us, and everything Already there But unconstrained by form.

And sometime it’s enough To lie down here on earth Beside our long ancestral bones:

Luminous

From “Hourglass” by Dani Shapiro - on time, memory, marriage and what makes us who we are.  

Many of us spend too long not being ourselves.  

That’s adoption for you.