As Children Do

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.“

Adapted from;
Marianne Williamson’s passage in “Return to Love: Reflections on a Course in Miracles”

Rushed Moments

Careful as you may be, there always seems to be an inevitable sense that you have missed something, that sinking sensation under your skin which tells you that have failed to live every nuance. Destined to lament the feeling in your heart that you have rushed through moments, in which you should have been paying more attention.


Shelter

Nuit Blanche

Betty et Zorg

First Surrender

The first kiss.
The most crucial component of any enduring love story. For it changes the connection of two people more strongly than even the final surrender; for that kiss, the very first one, already has within it that surrender.

I Rise

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Edited from Maya Angelou’s
“Still I Rise”

JD Salinger (1919 – 2010)

Pretty Wings

Teddy Pendergrass (1950 – 2010)