Dr. Cardin, as one of your follow-along participants, here is my report for the last two days. I have been using the bookshelf in my office as the place to draw these little divinations, and it has already been such fun.
Day 1:
"After an hour or two they had lost all clear sense of direction, though they knew well enough that they had long ceased to go northward at all. They were being headed off, and were simply following a course chosen for them eastwards and southwards, into the heart of the Forest and not out of it."
The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 112
This felt wonderfully timed. I had just sent a poem to a good friend that comes from a Northwest Native American tradition titled "Lost" by David Wagoner on the topic of what to do when you are lost in the forest. Lately my reflections and recent events have been steering me toward unanticipated destinations. As it turns out, they are beautiful ones that keep reaffirming the quiet kindness of the universe and the need to be still and trust nature.
Day 2:
"My responsibilities were in the Pacific, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and various agencies of the Government were working night and day for an over-all solution to the global problem. Now I am not familiar with their studies. I haven’t gone into it... To many, it seemed he had made the President’s case. The great turning point came with the testimony..."
Truman by David McCullough
I am not entirely sure what to make of this one, except that I had been reading this morning about military action within the United States and the idea of decisive moments. There have certainly been some significant turning points in my own life lately after focusing on solving problems for quite some time. It feels like this might be part of a larger message forming. Time will tell.
Glad you're playing, Brenda! Interesting that the first gleaning is immediately meaningful (and I love it) while the second is more obscure. Will look forward to seeing if a larger message does indeed form.
I did this this morning, inspired by your post of yesterday. (I've even written about it a bit in a post I haven't published yet--not entirely sure I will) but here is my passage. I chose my shelf of travel books, and this came from a book called CLEAR WATERS RISING about a man's walk across the mountains of Europe from Spain to Istanbul:
"A narrow path climbed steeply over rocks and tree roots, and using Que Chova to drive back the briars, I passed beneath a cliff, or a wall, then scrambled over boulders to the brink of a void. Deafened by the rise and fall of my own breath, I wondered where the castle had gone, then found the path again, cutting unexpectedly along a shelf on the north side of the ridge. The path led to the castle gate."
This feels entirely relevant to what's going on in my own life at the moment, which at times absolutely feels like being lost on the brink of a void and unable to hear anything but my own breath. Heartening to know that if I keep beating back the briars, the path will reappear and take me to my intended destination.
Glad you're participating in this, Lynda! That's a rich passage. Interesting that you can immediately sense a meaningfulness for yourself at this moment.
Since I'm a day behind, I'll put today's (my day two) here as well. This time I chose to pick a book from shelves from my days studying Old and medieval English literature--needless to say, this gave me a passage that was a bit more obscure, from the Middle English poem "The Parliament of the Three Ages":
In the original Middle English:
Hertys and hundes one hillys thay gowen
The foxe and the filmarte they flede to the erthe;
The hare hurkles by hawes and harde thedir dryves
And ferkes faste to hir fourme and fatills hir to sitt.
In more modern English:
Harts and hounds on hills they look about intently/gaze about
The fox and the polecat they lead to the earth
The hare crouches by hedges and runs quickly to that place
And goes fast to her nest and readies to sit.
I'll admit this one was more obscure than yesterday's, which I suspected might be the case when I chose to reach for these shelves! But thinking about the creatures themselves--foxes and hares in particular being magical and/or liminal creatures--and their movement in these brought a little more clarity. An interesting experiment at any rate!
Thanks for the invitation to play along. My first quotation will be from Nat Cassidy's novel, When the Wolf Comes Home: on page 182, the main character declares, "You get to be a certain age and they stop calling it scared and start calling it anxiety".
My day 2 is from a Substack page I just read (Into the Deep Woods): It sometimes feels to me that the main problem we have in Western society is a desire for fixity, for the material of our existence to be fully knowable, controllable, subject to the individual or collective will.
Glad you're playing! Both of your entries so far are from works unfamiliar to me, so I'm glad for the worldview expansion. Some interesting resonances between them.
Dr. Cardin, as one of your follow-along participants, here is my report for the last two days. I have been using the bookshelf in my office as the place to draw these little divinations, and it has already been such fun.
Day 1:
"After an hour or two they had lost all clear sense of direction, though they knew well enough that they had long ceased to go northward at all. They were being headed off, and were simply following a course chosen for them eastwards and southwards, into the heart of the Forest and not out of it."
The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 112
This felt wonderfully timed. I had just sent a poem to a good friend that comes from a Northwest Native American tradition titled "Lost" by David Wagoner on the topic of what to do when you are lost in the forest. Lately my reflections and recent events have been steering me toward unanticipated destinations. As it turns out, they are beautiful ones that keep reaffirming the quiet kindness of the universe and the need to be still and trust nature.
Day 2:
"My responsibilities were in the Pacific, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and various agencies of the Government were working night and day for an over-all solution to the global problem. Now I am not familiar with their studies. I haven’t gone into it... To many, it seemed he had made the President’s case. The great turning point came with the testimony..."
Truman by David McCullough
I am not entirely sure what to make of this one, except that I had been reading this morning about military action within the United States and the idea of decisive moments. There have certainly been some significant turning points in my own life lately after focusing on solving problems for quite some time. It feels like this might be part of a larger message forming. Time will tell.
Glad you're playing, Brenda! Interesting that the first gleaning is immediately meaningful (and I love it) while the second is more obscure. Will look forward to seeing if a larger message does indeed form.
I did this this morning, inspired by your post of yesterday. (I've even written about it a bit in a post I haven't published yet--not entirely sure I will) but here is my passage. I chose my shelf of travel books, and this came from a book called CLEAR WATERS RISING about a man's walk across the mountains of Europe from Spain to Istanbul:
"A narrow path climbed steeply over rocks and tree roots, and using Que Chova to drive back the briars, I passed beneath a cliff, or a wall, then scrambled over boulders to the brink of a void. Deafened by the rise and fall of my own breath, I wondered where the castle had gone, then found the path again, cutting unexpectedly along a shelf on the north side of the ridge. The path led to the castle gate."
This feels entirely relevant to what's going on in my own life at the moment, which at times absolutely feels like being lost on the brink of a void and unable to hear anything but my own breath. Heartening to know that if I keep beating back the briars, the path will reappear and take me to my intended destination.
Glad you're participating in this, Lynda! That's a rich passage. Interesting that you can immediately sense a meaningfulness for yourself at this moment.
Since I'm a day behind, I'll put today's (my day two) here as well. This time I chose to pick a book from shelves from my days studying Old and medieval English literature--needless to say, this gave me a passage that was a bit more obscure, from the Middle English poem "The Parliament of the Three Ages":
In the original Middle English:
Hertys and hundes one hillys thay gowen
The foxe and the filmarte they flede to the erthe;
The hare hurkles by hawes and harde thedir dryves
And ferkes faste to hir fourme and fatills hir to sitt.
In more modern English:
Harts and hounds on hills they look about intently/gaze about
The fox and the polecat they lead to the earth
The hare crouches by hedges and runs quickly to that place
And goes fast to her nest and readies to sit.
I'll admit this one was more obscure than yesterday's, which I suspected might be the case when I chose to reach for these shelves! But thinking about the creatures themselves--foxes and hares in particular being magical and/or liminal creatures--and their movement in these brought a little more clarity. An interesting experiment at any rate!
Thanks for the invitation to play along. My first quotation will be from Nat Cassidy's novel, When the Wolf Comes Home: on page 182, the main character declares, "You get to be a certain age and they stop calling it scared and start calling it anxiety".
My day 2 is from a Substack page I just read (Into the Deep Woods): It sometimes feels to me that the main problem we have in Western society is a desire for fixity, for the material of our existence to be fully knowable, controllable, subject to the individual or collective will.
Glad you're playing! Both of your entries so far are from works unfamiliar to me, so I'm glad for the worldview expansion. Some interesting resonances between them.