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This is very lovely and how perfect to bring the masterful wordsmith Wendell Berry into this. I’m sure you’ve also read Henry Beston’s Outermost House, which I’m currently discovering. There’s a passage at the beginning where he writes “the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed me I could not let go. The world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. In my world of beach and dune these elemental presences lived and had their being, and under their arch there moved an incomparable pageant of nature and the year.”

How beautiful it is to read such things and be transported for a moment to someone else’s experiences. Thank you for sharing your beautiful words in the way that you do and extending these connections.

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Not to be overly dramatic, but as the tumblrinas would say: *screaming, crying, throwing up* over this. Your work is a gift, this essay felt like a blessing. I was immediately reminded of Campbell's: "People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. "

I also want to [...] say, each morning upon waking: I am here, I am staying, and I am paying attention in the light.

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