August 1

He taught me to care more for doing what was right than for whatever blessings, consequences, or honors it might bring me. He taught me I had no right to believe that the good I might do in the world, in the end, had any more to do with me than with others. We are interdependent with each other and with God, and a principled life of integrity lived on behalf of others is the only possession we can obtain in life. Everything else, it seems, is dross.

— George Handley, writing about Lowell Bennion

August 2

Do what is right; the shackles are falling.
Chains of the bondsmen no longer are bright;
Lightened by hope, soon they’ll cease to be galling.
Truth goeth onward; then do what is right!

Do what is right; let the consequence follow.
Battle for freedom in spirit and might;
And with stout hearts look ye forth till tomorrow.
God will protect you; then do what is right!

Do what is right; be faithful and fearless.
Onward, press onward, the goal is in sight.
Eyes that are wet now, ere long will be tearless.
Blessings await you in doing what’s right!

— Anonymous hymn, “Do What is Right”

August 3

Anywhere is the center of the world.

— Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks

August 4

This is the sense of the desert hills, that there is room enough and time enough. Trees grow to consummate domes; every plant has its perfect work. Noxious weeds such as come up thickly in crowded fields do not flourish in the free spaces. Live long enough with an Indian, and he or the wild things will show you a use for everything that grows in these borders. The manner of the country makes the usage of life there, and the land will not be lived in except in its own fashion.

… The beginning of spring in Shoshone Land — oh the soft wonder of it! — is a mistiness as of incense smoke, a veil of greenness over the whitish stubby shrubs, a web of color on the silver sanded soil. …

To understand the fashion of any life, one must know the land it is lived in and the procession of the year

— Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain

August 5

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit here. When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything; I begin just where I left off.

— Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

August 6

Their eyes were held upon some vision out of range, something away in the end of distance, some reality that she did not know, or even suspect. What was it that they saw? Probably they saw nothing after all, nothing at all. But that was the trick, wasn’t it? To see nothing at all, nothing in the absolute. To see beyond the landscape, beyond every shape and shadow and color, that was to see nothing. That was to be free and finished, complete, spiritual. To see nothing slowly and by degrees, at last; to see first the pure, bright colors of near things, then all pollutions of color, all things blended and vague and dim in the distance, to see finally beyond the clouds and the pale wash of the sky—the none and nothing beyond that. To say “beyond the mountain,” and to mean it, to mean, simply, beyond everything for which the mountain stands, of which it signifies the being. Somewhere, if only she could see it, there was neither nothing nor anything. And there, just there, that was the last reality.

— N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn

August 7

Sunrise is the time to feel that you will be able to find out how to help somebody close to you who you think needs help even if he doesn’t think so. At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.

— Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

August 8

Her eyes pooled as she looked at him. The tears rose and spilled over. And then she was weeping even as he had wept a few minutes ago–except without the anger. Strangely, Chauntecleer felt an urge to comfort her; but at this moment he was no Lord, and the initiative was not in him. A simple creature only, he watched–felt–the miracle take place. Nothing changed: The clouds would not be removed, nor his sons returned, nor his knowledge plenished. But there was this. His grief had become her grief, his sorrow her own. And though he grieved not one bit less for that, yet his heart made room for her, for her will and wisdom, and he bore the sorrow better.

The Dun Cow lay down next to the Rooster and spent the rest of the night with him. She never spoke a word, and Chauntecleer did not sleep. But for a little while they were together.

— Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow

August 9

Behold, here are the waters of Mormon (for thus were they called) and now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light; Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life — Now I say unto you, if this be the desire of your hearts, what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord, as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will serve him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you?

And now when the people had heard these words, they clapped their hands for joy, and exclaimed: This is the desire of our hearts.

— Mosiah 18: 8-11, from the Book of Mormon, translated by Joseph Smith, Jr.

August 10

The buzzing of grasshopper wings came from the weeds in the yard, and the sound made his backbone loose. He lay back in the red dust on the old mattress and closed his eyes. The dreams had been terror at loss, at something lost forever; but nothing was lost; all was retained between the sky and the earth, and within himself. He had lost nothing. The snow-covered mountain remained, without regard to titles of ownership or the white ranchers who thought they possessed it. They logged the trees, they killed the deer, bear, and mountain lions, the built their fences high; but the mountain was far greater than any of all of these things. The mountain outdistanced their destruction, just as love had outdistanced death. The mountain could not be lost to them, because it was in their bones; Josiah and Rocky were not far away. They were close; they had always been close. And he loved them then as he had always loved them, the feeling pulsing over him as strong as it had ever been. They loved him that way; he could still feel the love they had for him. The damage that had been done had never reached this feeling. This feeling was their life, vitality locked deep in blood memory, and the people were strong … and nothing was ever lost as long as the love remained.

— Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

August 11

I was raised under an African sky. … Darkness was never something I was afraid of. The clarity, definition, and profusion of stars became maps as to how one navigates at night. I always knew where I was simply by looking up. … My sons do not have these guides. They have no relationship to darkness, nothing in their imagination tells them there are pathways in the night they can move through … I am Kikuyu. My people believe if you are close to the Earth, you are close to people … What an African woman nurtures in the soil will eventually feed her family. Likewise, what she nurtures in her relations will ultimately nurture her community. It is a matter of living the circle. Because we have forgotten our kinship with the land … our kinship with each other has become pale. We shy away from accountability and involvement. We choose to be occupied, which is quite different from being engaged.

— Wangari Waigwa-Stone, quoted in Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge

August 12

The history of the meadow goes like this: no one owns it, no one ever will. The people, all ghosts now, were ghosts even then; they drifted through, drifted away, thinking they were not moving. They learned the recitation of the seasons and the repetitive work that seasons require. Only one of them succeeded in making a life here, for almost fifty years. He weathered. Before a backdrop of natural beauty, he lived a life from which everything was taken but a place. He had lived so close to the real world it almost let him in. By the end he had nothing.

— James Galvin, The Meadow

August 13

I do believe humankind holds a special place in the world. It’s the same place held by a mockingbird, in his opinion, and a salamander in whatever he has that resembles a mind of his own. Every creature alive believes this: The center of everything is me. Every creature alive has its own kind of worship, I think , but do you think a salamander is worshiping some God that looks like a big two-legged man? Go on! To him, a man’s a shadowy nuisance (if anything) compared to the sacred business of finding food and a mate and making progeny to rule the mud for all times. … Everything alive is connected to every other by fine, invisible threads. Things you don’t see can help you plenty, and things you try to control will often rear back and bite you.

— Nannie, in Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer

August 14

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold familiar wind– …

One by one objects are defined–
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance–Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken

— from William Carlos Williams’ “Spring and All”

August 15

“Help,” he said, “is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.”

“So it is,” he said, using an old homiletic transition, “that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don’t know what part to give or maybe we don’t like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed.”

— Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

August 16

But ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another. And also, ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish.

For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind And behold, even at this time, ye have been calling on his name, and begging for a remission of your sins. And has he suffered that ye have begged in vain? Nay; he has poured out his Spirit upon you, and has caused that your hearts should be filled with joy, and has caused that your mouths should be stopped that ye could not find utterance, so exceedingly great was your joy. And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another.

— Mosiah 4: 15-16, 19-21 from the Book of Mormon, translated by Joseph Smith, Jr.

August 17

Freedom will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.
Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.
I live here, too.
I want my freedom
Just as you.

— Langston Hughes, “Freedom”

August 18

What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt, —
dumbly calling, deafly listening—that
in misfortune, even death,
encourage others
and in its defeat, stirs
the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.
So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.

— Marianne Moore, “What Are Years?”

August 19

August 20

I work at a library, where my job is to buy videotapes for the film collection. Over the years, I’ve seen thousands of tapes. It gets to be pretty routine after a while. Then, last week, I put in a tape and started to watch the movie. A mother and her children are riding in a car. The children ask where they’re going. The mother replies, “We’re going to Santa Rosa.” I give a mental thumps-up. After all, Santa Rosa is my hometown. I watch awhile, checking for sound and picture quality. I eject the tape and put in part II. It’s night. A young girl is running down the street. She approaches a house, runs up the steps, crosses the port, and climbs in through a bedroom window. I move forward in my seat. It can’t be. That’s my porch, and the window leads into my bedroom. I’m busy looking at the room. Window to the right, no closets–the house is too old for that. The fourteen-foot ceilings, so hard to find curtains for. I stop the tape; my mind is spinning. This is the bedroom in the house I grew up in. I slept in that room with my grandmother, in a small iron bed across the room from her. I eject the tape and put in the first tape again. Mother and children driving along the street. Now they are entering a neighborhood made up of different ethnic groups. Hispanic children playing in the street, a Vietnamese woman reading the paper, black men talking in an alley. The car turns the corner. I lean forward in my chair. I’ve been on this street. I’ve ridden down it on my blue Sears bicycle with the sheepskin seat, the summer wind blowing in my face. The car pulls up to a house. The mother gets out and climbs the porch steps. A woman comes to the door. Through the screen I can see the gingerbread along the arch that leads to the dining room. They are in the kitchen talking. Everything is exactly the same. The kitchen table under the window, the big white enamel stove, the single cabinet by the sink. A man steps from another room, my bedroom. He has a towel around his shoulders. He is coming from the only bathroom in the house. My bedroom door has a small oval-shaped knob that is high up on the door. I can remember reaching for it. I strain forward as though I can see more this way. I can make out the side door to the porch where I made mud cookies for my dog. I know just beyond this are the steps that lead to the backyard where I buried the dead bird I found, the apple tree with the swing, and my grandfather’s garden. I stop the tape. Suddenly thirty-five years and thousands of miles are gone. In some subtle way I am changed. I can feel the sun on my skin, see my dog’s face, and hear the birds singing. In a world where life is sometimes mundane, repetitive, and often cruel, I am filled with wonder.

— Marie Johnson, Fairbanks, Alaska, “The Videotape,” in I Thought My Father Was God and Other True Tales from NPR’s National Story Project

August 21

The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun,
each day the last day.

A red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily

moves his delicate feet
and long tail. I hold
my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.

— Denise Levertov, “Living”

August 22

The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.

The self-critical jackal does not exist.
The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly
live as they live and are glad of it.

The killer whale’s heart weighs one hundred kilos
but in other respects it is light.

There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun.

— Wislawa Szymborska, “In Praise of Self-Deprecation,” translated by Magnus Krynski and Robert Maguire

August 23

God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God; Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel: Whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles. For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.

Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes. And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;

For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.

— 2 Timothy 1: 7-12; 2: 22-25; 4: 6-8

August 24

You will not tame this sea
either by humility or rapture.
But you can laugh in its face.

Laughter
was invented by those
who live briefly
as a burst of laughter.

The eternal sea
will never learn to laugh.

— Anna Swir, “The Sea and the Man,” translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

August 25

I am the poet of reality
I say the earth is not an echo
Nor man an apparition;
But that all things seen are real,
The witness and albic dawn of things equally real
I have split the earth and the hard coal and rocks and the solid bed of the sea
And went down to reconnoitre there a long time,
And bring back a report,
And I understand that those are positive and dense every one
And that what they seem to the child they are
[And that the world is not a joke,
Nor any part of it a sham].

— Walt Whitman, “I am the Poet”

August 26

On a piece of toilet paper
Afloat in the unflushed piss,
The fully printed lips of a woman.

Nathan, cheer up! The sewer
sends you a big red kiss.
Ah, nothing’s wasted, if it’s human.

— Leonard Nathan, “Bladder Song”

August 27

What I mean is, lots of time you don’t know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn’t interest you most. I mean you can’t help it sometimes. What I think is, you’re supposed to leave somebody alone if he’s at least being interesting and he’s getting all excited about something. I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It’s nice … [Mr. Vinson would] keep telling you to unify and simplify all the time. Some things you just can’t do that to. I mean you can’t hardly ever simplify and unify something just because someone wants you to.

— Holden Caulfield, in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye

August 28

He is patient, he is not angry.
He sits in silence to pass judgment.
He sees you even when he is not looking.
He stays in a far place—but his eyes are on the town.

He stands by his children and lets them succeed.
He causes them to laugh—and they laugh.
Ohoho—the father of laughter.
His eye is full of joy.
He rests in the sky like a swarm of bees.

Obatala—who turns blood into children.

— “Invocation of the Creator,” Yoruba folklore, translated by Ulli Beier

August 29

for Don Ramon del Valle-Inclan

The train moves through the Guadarrama
one night on the way to Madrid.
The moon and the fog create
high up a rainbow.
Oh April moon, so calm,
driving the white clouds!

The mother holds her boy
sleeping on her lap.
The boy sleeps, and nevertheless
sees the green fields outside,
and trees lit up by sun,
and the golden butterflies.

The mother, her forehead dark
between a day gone and a day to come,
sees a fire nearly out
and an oven with spiders.

There’s a traveler made with grief,
no doubt seeing odd things;
he talks to himself, and when he looks
wipes us out with his look.

I remember fields under snow,
and pine trees of mother mountains.

And you, Lord, through whom we all
have eyes, and who sees souls,
tell us if we all one
day will see your face.

— Antonio Machado, “Rainbow at Night,” translated by Robert Bly

August 30

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

— 1 Corinthians 13: 12, from the King James Version of the Bible

August 31

So many want to be lifted by song and dancing,
and this morning it is easy to understand.
I write in the sound of chirping birds hidden
in the almond trees, the almonds still green
and thriving in the foliage. Up the street,
a man is hammering to make a new house as doves
continue their cooing forever. Bees humming
and high above that a brilliant clear sky.
The roses are blooming and I smell the sweetness.
Everything desirable is here already in abundance.
And the sea. The dark thing is hardly visible
in the leaves, under the sheen. We sleep easily.
So I bring no sad stories to warn the heart.
All the flowers are adult this year. The good
world gives and the white doves praise all of it.

— Linda Gregg, “A Dark Thing Inside the Day”