Shellen Lubin's Monday Morning Quote

13 Sep, 2010 - Mirror Nature

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:00:00 UTC

"Nature often holds up a mirror so we can see more clearly the ongoing processes of growth, renewal, and transformation in our lives."

Mary Ann Brussat

I was so deeply happy these last few days resting from my labors in the peace of the countryside and in and on the lake itself, slowing my days down enough to watch insects and fish and and frogs, ripples in the water and stars in the night sky, so slow, so deeply lazy/peaceful that I actually chose yesterday--not from inability or forgetfulness, but choice--to wait until this morning when I was back in the city to do this week's quote.

And all I want to say is that is okay, that has to be okay, sometimes--to choose . . . to rest . . . to opt out . . .

30 Aug, 2010 - Sacred Rest

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 00:00:00 UTC

"Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected."

George Macdonald

"If I get to pick what I want to do, then it's play...if someone else tells me that I have to do it, then it's work."

Patricia Nourot

In this week before the celebration of Labor, in this last week of summer before the school year begins--the first school year of over 20 where the only child in school is far, far away, and still it always feels like the beginning of the new year to me--I am trying to cultivate play and idleness. You lose the touch in the city, in the chaos of parenting, friending, surviving, thriving, in the chaos of living multiple artistic lives.

But here in the country, by the lake, in this easy and welcoming house, it comes back haltingly. We lost power yesterday, and it was a gift of sorts: we talked, we read, we went swimming. Rest is sacred, because it is good for the soul.

23 Aug, 2010 - Choose Excuse

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:00:00 UTC

"It is the ability to choose which makes us human."

Madeleine L'Engle

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."

John Kenneth Galbraith

As I have often said to my now-grown children when they had every excuse in the book for not having done something they claimed was important to them (good excuses, many of them, excellent rationales): But what do you really want, the thing you say you want or an excuse for not having it?

16 Aug, 2010 - Prepare Your Heart

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:00:00 UTC

"My father said something you learn
Only by doing when it comes your turn:
Everything comes around, so be ready if you can
Prepare your heart like the farmer turns the land"

Wendy Waldman and Don Lowery
"You Plant Your Fields"

Everything comes around, and much of it is coming around this year. My heart is being stretched with the joys of love and recognition and discovery and the pain of loss and anger (both mine and others) and wrenching changes, so much that sometimes I feel it won't be able to contain it all and will explode, but I'm learning how strong my heart muscle is from years of sowing and reaping.

The land is well tilled. The soil is rich. The plants and trees are all doing as well as each can, and those that lived bore fruit and vegetables that have been eaten by us at various meals of one or two or many, or by birds or deer, or been brought to market to sell, or rotted back into the ever-forgiving earth.

The land has been well used, and is still rich with nutrients for more to come.

9 Aug, 2010 - Unpacking Memories, Possibilities, and Challenges

Mon, 9 Aug 2010 00:00:00 UTC

"The challenges of change are always hard. It's time that we unpack those challenges . . . that require us to change and become more responsible for shaping our own future."

Hillary Rodham Clinton

"When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure."

Peter Marshall

I am doing a lot of unpacking these days--unpacking of multiple lifetimes of stored stuff--mine and others--filled with memories and possibilities that did or didn't reach some kind of fruition. It is indeed a challenge.

My mother, until her recent severe decline in vision, was infinitely resourceful--as a seamstress, a craftsperson, a teacher and 4-H leader, a folk dancer and costumer, a true "home maker." But because of it she saved everything, EVERYTHING, because everything could be used again, and creatively, sometimes even brilliantly. She taught me to save everything, too, which has been a lesson hard to unlearn in my New York City apartment with two kids--though a fire helped, as does a partner who hates "stuff." Now the kids have left the apartment, and she has left her house for one manageable room in an assisted living facility.

There is so much to let go of.

2 Aug, 2010 - Happiness Grown

Mon, 2 Aug 2010 00:00:00 UTC

"The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mood of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; for happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up."

Charles Langbridge Morgan

"Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?"

Rose Kennedy

It is a different kind of joy that we find after agony, loss, heartbreak, or having lost certain capabilities, faculties. If we do not allow joy to "grow up" continually, perpetually, we may never feel joy again. And yet there is so much to delight in at every stage of being--so much wonder, so much beauty, so much love and affection.

It's all about staying open to the possibilities.

There's always more. Until there isn't.

26 Jul, 2010 - Dreams and Anguish

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:00:00 UTC

"Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together."

Eugene Ionesco

Which is why people bond in calamities, in stuck elevators, over births and deaths and short-term projects, anything that is so entirely engaging that it takes us beyond our normal personal limits.

Unless we get stuck in our ideologies.

Home again home again jiggety jig.

19 Jul, 2010 - Ideas of Travel

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:00:00 UTC

"Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is the change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living."

Miriam Beard

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page."

St. Augustine

It can get difficult and stressful, it can, when the cars drive on the left instead of the right (especially when you're driving one, not just stepping out into the street looking the wrong way!), when the people can't understand what you're saying or answer you (or, as in France, don't care to even try), when all the people rush on the train without letting anyone off first--different customs, different habits, different words and ways of thinking and seeing the world . . . and yet, it is so valuable, and so enriching. The world has been around for so much longer than the United States of America, and different periods of history have required and inspired such different cultural expression; and people, although essentially so similar, have manifested the art of being so differently.

There is no other way to get that as truly and fully as immersing yourself in it.

And there is a huge triumph every time you discover how to get where you're going and/or where you've managed to get yourself instead.

Including going home.

12 Jul, 2010 - Dreams of Means of Survival

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:00:00 UTC

"If you and I are sitting in a warm room having a nice talk, we have to ask ourselves how our own people survived. What did our people do . . . that you and I came to be born?"

Nuala O'Faolain
MY DREAM OF YOU

I wonder these things much of the time . . . sometimes passing fleeting thoughts, sometimes gnawing obsessions . . . but here in olde England where buildings and class distinctions and prejudi have stood tall for so much longer (I've just named that the plural of prejudice--prejudi-- both a logical grammatical construction and a pun, as one who is prejudiced does and is a Pre Judge I), I wonder more, I wonder aloud, I discuss with new and old friends and allies.

What did our people do? How did they survive the wars and plagues and slavery and expulsions? Were their means noble or mercenary? Do we profit from their labor or their thievery? I do believe it is a question worth asking.

Immense thanks to Sherry Huckabee (sherrylhuckabee.typepad.com), great friend and world traveler, for the guidebooks, and this guidebook of another kind.

5 Jul, 2010 - Packing for Progress

Mon, 5 Jul 2010 00:00:00 UTC

"Only the fairy tale equates changelessness with happiness. Permanence means paralysis and death. Only in movement, with all its pain, is life."

Jacob Burkhardt

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another."

Anatole France

Not all change is progress, but all progress is change. If we cannot accept the messiness, the struggle, the sense of loss inherent in change, we have no hope for progress. (She says this as boxes and bags open and half-unpacked still fill her apartment after days of and days of sorting what is going out and what is coming in and which stuff is better where and which stuff should be stored and which should just be tossed, let go, released, like the stuff lost in two fires, five moves, seven lives lived.) And in whatever ways we refuse to progress, those parts of us wither away and die.

There really is no other option.