Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light

"Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light."
-Joyce Carol Oates

I had the luck to hear this amazing woman, writer, poet, journalist speak yesterday.
Very powerful. I guess what she left with me is that it is so important to take times to ourselves
to do the things we love- and find that time alone.
She talked about how Emily Dickinson would write thoughts that came to her, mere fragmnets,
on receipts or scraps of paper throughout the day. She would be busy cooking or cleaning- taking
care of her family and loved ones. At the end of the day she would escape to her room and
as the door shuts she would excalim she had found freedom. It was there that she would
pull out the scraps and arrange them on the table to transform them into beautiful poetry.

We have the ability to make any change we want, small or large, through the mere shutting of a door, the extinguishment of a light, or perhaps like the night englufing the desert- all at once.

dust bunnies

"I think of a gesture of love as anything we do that helps others discover their humanity".

This quote really resonated with me. I'm not really sure what humanity means fully, but I do know that I find divinity in it when my heart is open.

Recently, my friend Jen and I were talking about the human experience, and it's apparent uniqueness. Humanity is so improbable! Sometimes it seems so much so that chance doesn't seem like a sufficient explanation. As Jen said to me, how crazy is it that we, who are made a the same stuff as clouds of dust floating in space, happen to have these molecules that have organized themselves so perfectly over millions of years as to become sentient beings! That we can sit together and have a conversation...type on this thing called a computer...give each other hugs and feel happy. How improbable! And really special. 

And you know? Actually this whole universe is boundlessly amazing and improbable. We could have been clouds of star dust, but instead we are complicated beings in an unfathomable complex web of systems. I am in awe of all of it.

And it doesn't end: www.earthsky.org/radioshows/53007/space-moth-surprises-astronomers