“Slowly I have realized that I do not have to be qualified to do what I am asked to do, I just have to go ahead and do it, even if I can’t do it as well as I think it ought to be done. This is one of the most liberating lessons of my life.”
— Madeleine L’Engle

“I didn’t even cry because pieces of me had already died. I’m a ghost haunting these halls, climbing up walls I never knew were there. I’m lost, broken down the middle of my hard heart. You make me a ghost.”
— Ingrid Michaelson

(written by a friend)

now that you’ve killed yourself
and the whole world knows that we were the ones who loved you and that’s why we’re crying, we become those people on the other side. we become that alien race who live in a land of darkness and finality. no one wants to touch us, not because they fear it is catching, but because they know it is not. they will not be able to feel what we feel, and they are afraid of the mystery that could bring us so quickly to tears and to our knees.

so they remain silent and flow on in quick, bright streams. and we, like dark stones, sit deaf and aching.

“We know separation so well because we’ve tasted the union. The reed flute makes music because it has already experienced changing mud and rain and light. Longing becomes more poignant if in the distance you can’t tell whether your friend is going away or coming back. The pushing away pulls you in.”
— Rumi

Climb.

Yesterday as I sat at the precipice of Mt Penobscot at Acadia National Park enjoying the absolute silence and the wind blowing clouds over the hills, I thought about how many other people must have sat in that exact spot enjoying the exact same things. I quickly filled up with joy and intrigue as I realized, “People love being in special places like the tops of mountains and thinking about who else has been there before them.” These kinds of things make us feel very connected to other human beings — other human beings who are at least enough like us that they also like to climb mountains. And that connection makes us feel more complete. Better at being human. It’s a feeling that we are connected to something bigger. Even bigger than the mountain on which we sit.