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He hated wet weather. Yet he had put his face up to the drizzle and thanked it for falling on him.
“That’s the gift of winter: it’s irresistible. Change will happen in its wake, whether we like it or not. We can come out of it wearing a different coat.”
― Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
― Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible. Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season in which the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order. Doing those deeply unfashionable things—slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting—is a radical act now, but it is essential. This is a crossroads we all know, a moment when you need to shed a skin. If you do, you’ll expose all those painful nerve endings and feel so raw that you’ll need to take care of yourself for a while. If you don’t, then that skin will harden around you. It’s one of the most important choices you’ll ever make.”
― Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
― Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
“This is the attitude of bodhisattvas: to practice meditation not only for yourself, but for the world, to relieve the suffering. And, when others suffer less, you suffer less. When you suffer less, they suffer less. That is interbeing. There is no separation between yourself and others. You do not live just for yourself; you live for other people. Your peace, freedom, and joy also profit others; you are already helpful. And so, when you breathe mindfully or walk mindfully and create joy and peace, that is already a gift for the world.”
― Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet
― Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet
“In twenty-first-century Britain, we've linked singing with talent, and we've got that fundamentally wrong. The right to sing is an absolute, regardless of how it sounds to the outside world. We sing because we must. We sing because it fills our lungs with nourishing air, and lets our hearts soar with the notes we let out. We sing because it allows us to speak of love and loss, delight and desire, all encoded in lyrics that let us pretend that those feelings are not quite ours. In song, we have permission to rehearse all our heartbreaks, all our lusts. In song, we can console our children while they are still too young our rusty voices, and we can find shortcuts to ecstasy while performing the mundane duty of a daily shower or scrubbing down the kitchen after yet another meal.”
― Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
― Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
“Don't make yourself into a battlefield; the world doesn't need anymore fanatics.
If a habit is hard to shift, it's likely to have been transmitted to us through several generations, or held in place by society, culture, and our context, or environment.
We can discover a lot about ourselves and our Ancestors, as we begin to make changes to align our choices with our values.”
― Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet
If a habit is hard to shift, it's likely to have been transmitted to us through several generations, or held in place by society, culture, and our context, or environment.
We can discover a lot about ourselves and our Ancestors, as we begin to make changes to align our choices with our values.”
― Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet
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— last activity May 08, 2023 09:25AM
A place for people who love to read about and/or are compelled to write out the natural world. Share and discuss books that move you, anger you, chang ...more
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— last activity Nov 18, 2014 12:21PM
I created this group for anyone interested in reading and discussing mountaineering and adventure books.
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— last activity Apr 02, 2017 07:39AM
Discussion of old and new books on the topic, of wildlife, ecology, and the natural world and our place in it.
Hannah’s 2025 Year in Books
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