This morning, to start my day after a short sleep — the Muses woke me in the wee hours —  I read some of the musings of poet-philosopher David Whyte, and listened to an inspiring, poetic and real conversation between Whyte and Krista Tippett of OnBeing.

Whyte says he grew up “from long lines of rebels and the dispossessed … my blood inheritance was around disbelief.”

Here are a few excerpts to nourish your heart and soul on this day …

“Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity. … Put down the weight of your aloneness and enter the conversation.”

“If you have a really fierce loss … then human beings have every right to say “God, if this is how you play your game, I’m going to manufacture my own little game, my own little bubble, and I’m not coming out into this frontier again … I want to create distance.”

(Some people stay there for their whole lives, while others return from that withdrawn state and re-enter the conversation.)

“Incarnation means being here in your body with Life’s fierce need to change you.”

“The more you’re here and the more you’re alive the more you realize you’re a mortal human being. Will you actually have the conversation and become a full citizen of vulnerability, loss and disappearance which you have no choice about?”

“There is no self that will survive a real conversation …”

“There is a quality of youthfulness which is appropriate to every decade of life … we have this fixed idea of youthfulness from our teens or our 20s, but actually there is this youthfulness that’s appropriate to your 70s, or 80s, or 90s.”

“Innocence is what we allow to be gifted back to us once we’ve given ourselves away.”

“Innocence is the ability to be found by the world.”

Enjoy the full conversation between David Whyte in and Krista Tippett of OnBeing (The Conversational Nature of Reality)

Related Inspiration from Sophia’s Children

Grief is a Wild, Untamed Life Force

The Return: Becoming a Source and Ambassador

From Fear of Older to the Wisdom of Elder

Big Love,

Jamie

Featured Image Credit: Dawn by the Lake. PD image from hgwallbase.