Alive To The Work
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Our fast food, fast everything culture doesn’t teach us how to slow down and find that still place, the place of peace within. And now children are being taught “mindfulness,” meditation, the naming of emotions. I’m certain some of this is helping children and their families. But my concern is that once again we may be missing the boat by treating children like little adults when their brains, bodies, and souls are not fully developed. Children need to play, and we, as adults need to understand not only how important play is to them, but also that the way they play will determine a lot about who they become as they continue to mature…
— Denise Yanez
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“The beauty of your work, along with the beauty of your soul, is all that can protect you from the brutality of the world in which you create your dances, your poems, your stories, your characters. Strive for beauty in words, movements, chords. Strive for beauty in kindness and patience. The world in which artists live and work is no different from the stock market or a slaughterhouse, but we, the artists, have to be terribly different. We have to be blind to the world and brilliantly alive to the work.”
— Martha Graham
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Anger is sexy and easy, and I always reached for it, and calamity arrived in abundance. Reach for gratitude, even if you are thought slow or cowardly or weak. Smile and survive.
— Tennessee Williams
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The root of joy is gratefulness. It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.
— Brother David Steindl-Rast
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We are charged with the task of making the world thrive, yes, but we mustn’t forget that we ourselves need to taste the sweetness of life. We learn to do that as children quite naturally unless the world of adults encroaches and imposes its view of reality on us. In our culture, real vision of what humans are and what the world is somehow gets lost as we become adults.
Children are closer to the Real because they can still play. They can still imagine and create. Artists refuse to quit that way of being as they transition to maturity. That’s a dangerous time for most of us because the weight…
