Woven

We do not get to choose the pattern that we weave.

We may weave with love and hope - with a vision for the world -

we may try to weave a gift.

But who can know how our work will be received?

The strands we work combine in unpredicted ways

as they meet the tapestry around them.

Joy or sorrow?

Beauty or pain?

No matter our choice

others will decide.

And as the tapestry grows,

so the pattern changes,

and our strands take on new shapes,

new meanings

that we cannot know, or claim.

How will our patterns look in a hundred years? A thousand?

And who will be the judge?

We may choose the colour, the strength, the texture.

We may weave tightly or loosely

and even hope to choose our lines of intersection.

But we cannot choose the impact of our work,

nor see the finished picture.

We cannot choose even to have no impact.

That choice was made

before we ever came to be.

The design is,

and our work becomes part of a tapestry we will never fully see.

To exit is to leave a hole that cannot be repaired

and to fray the edges of a larger life.

Therefore weave with joy.

If the only pattern we can choose is our own journey into being,

then weave with hope; weave with abandon.

We do not get to choose the pattern that we weave.

But we get to weave.

Weave the pattern.

Ruth Davmor

Entangle

Discover

Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.

Buddha

Breakthrough

Glittering

...above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.

Ronald Dahl

Reverence

Angels

Forget everything you've ever learned about the stars and they'll once more be transformed into angels.

Paulo Coelho

Starburst

Silent

I love the silent hour of night,
For blissful dreams may then arise,

Revealing to my charmed sight, 

What may not bless my waking eyes.

Anne Brontë

Bubbles

Prayer

As you walk upon the sacred earth, treat each step as a prayer.

Black Elk

Bask

Story

It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. The story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

Patrick Rothfuss

Awaken

Imagination

I have a habit of letting my imagination run away from me. It always comes back though... drenched with possibilities.

Valaida Fullwood

Ethereal

Choose

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Khalil Gibran

Burnished

Conscious

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

Carl Jung

Resilient

Instrument

A single letter requires us to distil in it all the energy it contains, as if we were carving out its meaning. When the sacred texts are written, they contain the soul of the man who served as an instrument to spread them throughout the world. And that doesn't apply only to sacred texts, but to every mark we place on paper. Because the hand that draws each line reflects the soul of the person making that line.

Paulo Coelho, The witch of Portobello

Wings

Signs

Life is full of signs. The trick is knowing how to read them.

Abraham Verghese

Mystery

Seed

The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth…

Carl Jung

Frivolity

Habit

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

Arch

Silence

I do not escape into silence.

Rather I enter it with reverence and awe.

No longer do I cower in the shadows;

I choose them and know them to be

my power and my strength.

This world is not merely my refuge but my castle,

and here, I am Queen.

I choose to be the silence

and offer it as my gift.

Ruth Davmor

Community

Within

The most sacred place dwells within our heart, where dreams are born & secrets sleep, a mystical refuge of darkness & light, fear & conquest, adventure & discovery, challenge & transformation. Our heart speaks for our soul every moment while we are alive. Listen... as the whispering beat repeats: be...gin, be...gin, be...gin. It's really that simple. Just begin... again.

Royce Addington

Alert

See

Blessed are those who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.

Camille Pissarro

Wish

River

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

Rumi

Contrast

Age

The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.

Madeleine L’Engle

Cascade

Again

We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.

Carl Jung

Hush

Square

He always wanted to say things but no one understood.
He always wanted to explain things but to no one cared.
So he drew.
Sometimes he would just draw and it wasn’t anything.
He wanted to carve it in stone or write it in the sky.
He would lie out on the grass and look up at the sky and it
would be only him and the sky, and the things that needed saying.

And it was after that, that he drew the picture.
It was a beautiful picture.
He kept it under the pillow and would let no one see it.
He would look at it every night and think about it.
And when it was dark, and his eyes were closed, he could still see it.
It was all of him and he loved it.

When he started school he brought it with him.
Not to show anyone, but just to have like a friend.

It was funny about school.
He sat in a square brown desk, like all the other square
brown desks, and he thought it should be red.
And his room was a square brown room like all the other rooms.
It was tight and close, and stiff.

He hated to hold the pencil, and the chalk, with his arm stiff
and his feet flat on the floor, stiff with a teacher watching
and watching.
And then he had to write numbers.
And they weren’t anything.
They were worse than the letters which could be something
if you put them together.
The numbers were tight and square and he hated the whole thing.

The teacher came and spoke to him.
She told him to wear a tie like all the other boys.
He said he didn’t like them and she said it didn’t matter.
After that they drew.
He drew all yellow and it was the way he felt about morning.
And it was beautiful.

The teacher came and smiled at him.
“What’s this?” she said.
“Why don’t you draw something like Ken’s drawing?
Isn’t that beautiful?”
It was all questions.

After that his mother bought him a tie and he always drew
aeroplanes and rocket ships like everyone else.
And he threw the old picture away.
And when he lay out alone looking at the sky it was big and blue.
And all of everything, but he wasn’t any more.

He was square inside and brown, and his hands were stiff,
and he was like anyone else.
And the thing inside him that needed saying didn’t need saying anymore.

It had stopped pushing.
It was crushed, stiff.
Like everything else.

Anonymous

Serpentine

Original

Originality is the best form of rebellion.

Mike Sasso

Split

Rebellion

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

Albert Camus

Bloom

Insist

Insist on yourself; never imitate.Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession… Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Portal

Still

The outer world is so loud

And filled with self-importance.

Yet the secret places hidden

Deep inside

Hold vast treasure.

Pause and listen within

Make space for stillness

Wisdom will surface.

Nancy Lankston

Furred

Poetry

I believe that everything should be poetic. From the way your first sip of coffee feels in your mouth, to the texture of the mug you’re drinking from. The smell of the air during the sunrise, and the ways the rays cover your skin. Life is more enjoyable with the kind of emphasis encouraged by poetry.

Unknown Author

Passion

Suffering

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

Kahlil Gibran

Splendour

Soul

I wish to live a life that causes my soul to dance inside my body.

Dele Olanubi

Conversation

Dance

...dance is a way of rising up into space, of discovering new dimensions while still remaining in touch with your body. When you dance, the spiritual world and the real world manage to coexist quite happily.

Paulo Coelho, The witch of Portobello 

Frame

Paint

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

Vincent Van Gogh

Artistry

Fearing

Our doubts are traitors, 

and make us lose the good we oft might win, 

by fearing to attempt.

William Shakespeare

Memory

Renewal

This place I call home,
this place of stillness,
of deep and silent beauty:
It is my centre -
my balance
and my refuge.
In its silent music
I hear the beating of my heart.
This shadow world surrounds me
and buoys my dreaming mind
upon a pool of light.
Within its shimmering depths
I see myself reflected,
blessings of
a unique vision.
A choice,
a dream,
a hope;
a love too deep to name.
Here is purpose,
here is wisdom,
here is an end of doubt.
From here I rise rejoicing,
In the silence of Truth's song.

Ruth Davmor

Pearlescent

Human

It takes so much to be a human being
That there are very few
Who have the love and courage
To pay the price.

One has to abandon altogether
The search for security
And reach out to the risk of living
With both arms.

Morris West

Majestic

Consciousness

We are the beauty we have been seeking all our lives. We are consciousness knowing itself.

Jack Kornfield

Heart

Obligation

Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.

André Gide

Emerge

Fresh

Once greed, hatred and delusion are gone, you see everything fresh and new all the time. Every moment is new.

Dipama Barua

Dew

Acceptance

Whatever we do not love in our own self, we will not accept in another.

Jack Kornfield

Gather

Guest

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of furniture, still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Rumi

Pierce

Seed

It is not given to us to know how our life will affect the world. What is given to us is to tend the intentions of our heart and to plant beautiful seeds with our deeds.

Jack Kornfield

Passion

Working

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

Pablo Picasso

Peace

Cheeky

Don't let them get you down. Be cheeky, wild and wonderful.

Astrid Lindgren

Secrets

Uncertainty

I embrace the wisdom of uncertainty, because if everything is certain, where is creativity?

Deepak Chopra

Spring

Need

The need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence.

Tenzin Gyatso

14th Dalai Lama

Open

Flicker

in dreams i walk,
my mind flickering
in candle flame.
i am and i am not,
dissolving in a spark of light.
whispering,
softly,
the world plays inside me,
floating gently
on the breeze of thought.
i hold it and walk
invisibly within it
as the universe unfolds
in a breath.
and then i blink - out.

Ruth Davmor

Newborn

Decide

The day I decided my life was magical, there was suddenly magic all around me.

Unknown

Sea dragon

Who?

Who am I?

You are this moment,
this breath.
Memory entwined with possibility;
Wisdom,
clothed in fleeting sight.
A thousand thoughts
and unseen dreams:
all you choose to see,
to feel,
and all that you do not.
The past is a shifting shadow
written in your body
and changed by Time.
It shapes your every breath,
but cannot be
the reality of now.
Every word,
every image,
fades.
You are your history
and your becoming:
all -
and none.
You are a choice:
to breathe,
to be,
to feel.
You are the world you touch.
You are this moment.

Ruth Davmor

Uplifted

Awaken

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.

Carl Jung

Wisdom

Us

Surely the world we live in is but the world that lives in us.

Daisy Bates

Window

Waiting

The world is full of magic things, 
patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

W.B. Yeats

Silhouette

Trust

Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.

e. e. cummings

Reverence