Proper study . . .

It's Freya's day . . . and the mailbox continues to receive echoes from Valentine's day . . .

For the thirteenth-century Persian poet Rumi, religion isn’t primarily what you think, or even the actions you perform. It is what you desire...Knowing the Great Mystery—discerning the will of creation—is, for Rumi, more like falling in love than like receiving instruction from a written text. — Richard Rohr

The prolific author Henry Adams was born on this date in 1838 Boston.

"The proper study of mankind is woman." – Henry Adams, in Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, first published in 1904.

We've been told “the Garden of Eden” was a one-off, but it remains just under our feet. We don't need a grand spiritual awakening to come to us from a sky-God alter in order to come back into this Edenic consciousness. We just need to pay close attention to the connections that already constitute us. The lush, environmental contexts that shape our desires and our stories teaching us, as did the Stone Age Dionysus, how to send down our roots. – Sophie Strand, in The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine. Simon and Schuster, 2022.

Gifts From The Way

Staying true to The Way, what were once forks in the road

become rather gates that open welcoming your arrival.

In the morning, wise children bring you bread

and taking you by the hand

lead on a path to a clear pond

beyond which the next part of your journey begins.

– jab