You Do Not Have To Be Good

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.”

~ Mary Oliver

Unbeing Dead

“Unbeing dead isn't being alive.”

~ E. E. Cummings

Resist Much

“Resist much, obey little.”

~ Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

To Be Nobody But Yourself

“To be nobody but yourself 

in a world which is doing its best day and night 

to make you like everybody else 

means to fight the hardest battle

which any human being can fight 

and never stop fighting.”

~ E.E. Cummings