Rita_book

“Jesters do oft prove prophets.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.”
― Derrick A. Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism

“Later she sat on the ground in the forest between school and home, and spring was so bright and beautiful, the warm air touched her so tenderly, she could almost feel herself changing into a flower. Her light dress felt like petals.
"I love everything," she heard herself say.
"So do I," a voice answered.
Pearl straightened up and looked around. No one was there.”
― William Steig, The Amazing Bone

“That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it -
books, bricks, grief -
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled -
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?”
― Mary Oliver