Today, I’m again overwhelmed with a president who, on an ever-changing whim, goes against the constitution to levy tariffs that affect each one of us and everyone in the world, and that is just one thing he does daily. Therefore, I opened Stay Inspired, Shelter in Place, 2020.  It’s an expensive book but 100% of the profits are donated to NO KID HUNGRY.

This book is the inspiration of Lisa Dolby Chadwick, who is the founder of the Dolby Chadwick Gallery.  You can order the book through the gallery.  It’s a collection of poetry and art.  Open to any page and find beauty and comfort, perhaps even laughter.

In Dean Young’s poem “Whale Watch”, I smile and recognize these words:

… I have seen books with pink slips

marking vital passages

but this i do not recommend

as it makes the book appear foolish 

like a dog in a sweater.

Here’s the last line of Rilke’s poem “Sunset” translated by Robert Bly.

one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

Again, I recommend Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, “So Much Happiness” which can be found at poets.org.

Ken Wilber:

Great art suspends the reverted eye, the lamented past, the anticipated future: we enter with it into the timeless present; we are with God today, perfect in our manner and mode, open the riches and glories of a realm that time forgot, but that great art reminds us of: not by its content, but what what it does in us: suspends the desire to be elsewhere. And thus it undoes the agitated grasping in the heart of the suffering self, and releases us – maybe for a second, maybe for a minute, maybe for all eternity – releases us from the coil of ourselves.

This book is great art and releases us from the coil of ourselves.