To Know the Dark

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without light,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

Wendell Berry from Farming: A Handbook

What I Have Learned So Far.

Everything you do or don’t do will have unforeseeable consequences. What seems like an easy answer is just as likely to be your undoing and what seems like a terrible error in judgment or last-gasp leap of faith may be the only viable path through the darkness.

Mistakes will be made and losses will occur no matter how well you plan anything.

No matter how much you think you know what you want or need and how to get to it, there are almost certainly more important things you could pay attention to that will have a greater positive impact on your future life and take less effort in the long run.

Success is subjective and temporary and always based on previous failures.

Easy success can cause more damage than failure.

Citizen of Dark Times

by Kim Stafford

Agenda in a time of fear: Be not afraid.
When things go wrong, do right.
Set out by the half-light of the seeker.
For the well-lit problem begins to heal.

Learn tropism toward the difficult.
We have not arrived to explain, but to sing.
Young idealism ripens into an ethical life.
Prune back regret to let faith grow.

When you hit rock bottom, dig farther down.
Grief is the seed of singing, shame the seed of song.
Keep seeing what you are not saying.
Plunder your reticence.

Songbird guards a twig, its only weapon a song.