Maggie - ProfilesArchive

About Me

My actions are my true belongings. They are the ground on which I stand.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.
~Jalal ad-Din Rumi

I pay attention to little things, the quality of the light from day to day, the pattern of clouds in the sky, tiny hopeful gestures that one person makes to another, humorous coincidences...These details bring me much happiness and gratitude. I live with exuberance and integrity, passion and compassion. I lit a candle in a little Italian church once for exuberance and then, upon reflection, decided that should be tempered with integrity so I asked for that too. The passion and compassion came unbidden.

I enjoy the taste of fresh ripe fruits, gently-prepared vegetables, legacy-crafted cheese, and full-bodied red wine, and the intellectual pleasure of literature and film that offer fresh and thoughtful perspectives. Ideally, I would enjoy all of these at once weaving sensuality, spirituality, and rationality into one fully-experienced, ecstatic celebration!

I am enamored with trains as a metaphor for the timeless ebb and flow of life. The sounds of the wheels along the rails, the luggage along the cobblestones, and the mournful wail of the whistle echo for me the backbeat of a universal dance.

My Interests

in no particular order and in every possible order: compassion, teaching, research, reading, writing, thinking, being, kayaking, buddhism, balance, great vegetarian food, photography, hiking, travel, art, expanding my vision, cinema, music, infinity

I'd like to meet:

The Spirit wants only that there be flying.
~Rainer Maria Rilke

I am accomplished personally and professionally and would like to meet others who are similar. I do not expect that we should have traveled the same path necessarily. In fact, I find meeting people who have taken different paths exhilarating as it opens a new window for me on the possibilities of this human experience. What matters most to me is that you know yourself well enough to become the person you aspire to be. It is easy to say that we wish to be peaceful, wise, and kind but to live these words requires practice, discipline, and faithfulness. I would like to embody the qualities that are dear to me and would like to meet and support others who share this desire. We are all fallible. The best offering that we can make to ourselves and the universe is to sincerely acknowledge our imperfection and to transform it again and again into a loving kind integrity of heart and mind and action.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
~Mary Oliver

Books:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Book of Embraces, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Letters to a Young Poet, Stories of Eva Luna, Jitterbug Perfume, Ragtime, Life of Pi, Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, Talking Zen

Heroes:

Ghandi, Einstein, Amanda, Martin Luther King, Jr., Charles Darwin, Thich Nhat Hanh... In short, people of great insight, passion, compassion, and integrity

In Buddhism, the essential meaning of the word "study" is the unceasing, dedicated observation and investigation of whatever arises in the mind, be it pleasant or unpleasant. Only those familiar with the observation of the mind can really understand Dharma.
-Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, "Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree"

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My Blog

Myspace.com Blogs - Blow Out The Dust - Nick MySpace Blog

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.... A fabulous commentary on the values that have created many of the problems that we face today and the values that may very well save us. Thank yo...
Posted by Maggie on Tue, 04 Nov 2008 02:05:00 PST

We Are the Ones

We Are the Ones Song by will.i.am ...
Posted by Maggie on Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:44:00 PST

Roosevelt’s Room

Last year, on my father's birthday, he began to reminisce about being six years old and catching tadpoles and bathing in the washtub in front of the fireplace which was the only heat. His family lived...
Posted by Maggie on Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:07:00 PST

Aunt Leaf

Needing one, I invented her the great-great-aunt dark as hickorycalled Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloudor The-Beauty-of-the-Night.Dear aunt, I'd call into the leaves,and she'd rise up, like an old log ...
Posted by Maggie on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:19:00 PST

Owl Visitation

Last night an owl paused nearbyHer call undulating in the darkness"Why do you visit this space devoid of wildnessWhere we've forgotten our natureAnd so rarely sing and howl and coo?"She said she had c...
Posted by Maggie on Fri, 02 May 2008 04:36:00 PST

Kiss You Goodbye

I can't forget that morningWhen I bent to kiss youAnd you brushed me away Pulling your face from my handsI can't forget that morningWhen you packed up all your thingsAnd walked out the doorT...
Posted by Maggie on Sun, 09 Mar 2008 07:58:00 PST

The Fence

There was a little boy with a bad temper. His fathergave him a bag of nails and told him that every time helost his temper, to hammer a nail in the back fence. Thefirst day the...
Posted by Maggie on Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:02:00 PST

Coyote

We sought you each dayin the canyonsbehind boulders in the washin the dry gray brushwhere the wind whispered.We focused our eyeshope against hopeof seeing you emergeghostlikein the purple dusk.We sent...
Posted by Maggie on Sun, 27 Jan 2008 05:53:00 PST

Sunday Afternoon

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Posted by Maggie on Wed, 02 Jan 2008 06:18:00 PST

The Repository of Dreams

Last night I dreamed that I operated a charity of sorts, a repository of unfulfilled dreams. It was a place where dreams could be left until the dreamers were prepared to return and reclaim...
Posted by Maggie on Sun, 16 Dec 2007 05:37:00 PST