If you've been a HeartWood subscriber for a while,  you may remember the Last Wednesday Wisdom feature that appeared on the last Wednesday of every month. When I switched to publishing blog posts only twice a month--on the first and third Wednesdays--that feature went away, except for occasional appearances in months with an extra Wednesday.

During these troubled times, though, I couldn't think of anything better to offer than a collection of wisdom from other minds. I hope you find comfort and inspiration here.

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others . . . On the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. . . but if we were only wretched . . . we'd be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.
-- Pema Chödrön

You only get one chance. You have one journey through life; you cannot repeat even one moment or retrace one footstep. It seems that we are meant to inhabit and live everything that comes toward us.
-- John O'Donohue

Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don't see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being is already a form of violence.
​-- Eckhart Tolle

When you can't find someone to follow, you have to find a way to lead by example.
​-- Roxane Gay

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
-- Rabindranath Tagore

My sense of the holy . . . is bound up with the hope that someday, any millennium now, my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.
​-- Richard Rorty

We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies.
-- Etty Hillesum

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
​-- Maya Angelou

You say to yourself when you are at liberty how desperate you are for your solitude, you love your periods of solitude, you scramble for it, you find ways of being by yourself so you can do what you want with yourself and your mind. But when you're deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship.
​-- Wole Soyinka

I realize it's not the last Wednesday of the month, but I haven't done one of these compilations in quite a while, and I blew right past last month's bonus Wednesday, when I fully intended to post something extra. So I owe you! Besides, I've been finding some good stuff that I really want to share.

​So here you go . . . 

We tend to think of consciousness as skin bound, brain tethered. However, in nature we can sense something vaster--and that something larger senses us. And from here our perception and understanding transforms. We start to think from this bigger perspective.
-- Mark Coleman, Mindful magazine, April 2019

I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse. First things first.
-- Edward Abbey, "The First Morning," Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

Bees teach us so many lessons. When they take all this nectar from the tree, does that deprive the tree of anything? No, it enhances it. And when you give your time and energy to helping someone, does it deplete your skills? No, it gives you something to be proud of.
-- Brother Blaise Heuke, "The Beauty of a Bee," AARP The Magazine,  

Live with unremitting alertness.
-- Joseph Campbell

[W]ith art comes empathy. It allows us to look through some else's eyes and know their strivings and struggles. It expands the moral imagination and makes it impossible to accept the dehumanization of others. When we are without art, we are a diminished people--myopic, unlearned and cruel.
-- Dave Eggers, The New York Times, June 29, 2018

Authorship is a solitary business, always coming down to a writer and a blank page, but inevitably it becomes a social act as well, because the book is inextricably part of the world. It finds readers, it begins a conversation, it tells a kind of truth that can't be told in any other way--or else it fails to do that.
James Gleick, Authors Guild Bulletin, Spring-Summer 2018

But here's the thing: Humans are not what we do. Humans are everything we do, and feel, and think, with a dash of stardust thrown in. The same is true for writers.
-- Lenore Myka, "When to ignore good advice," Poets & Writers magazine, Sept/Oct 2018

You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.
-- Andy Warhol

Life is a great bundle of little things.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

For a long time, I was looking for happiness from success. Now I am looking for success from happiness.
-- Kathryn Budig, Yoga Journal, August 2018

Mālo le onosa’i
-- Samoan proverb loosely translated as “patience is a virtue”

​I’ve been thinking a lot about patience—and its payoffs—lately. About the years I spent writing and revising and polishing my memoir, and the months of researching agents and publishers, pitching at conferences, and sending out queries.
 
Friends praised my perseverance, but I sometimes wondered if they were secretly thinking, Isn’t it about time she gave up on this thing and got on with her life? Sometimes I wondered that myself.
 
At the same time, I kept reading about authors—many of them famous now—who traveled the same plodding path, encountering rejection after rejection until finally they hit publication pay dirt. So I waited . . . and waited . . . and kept doing everything I could to improve my odds until, miracle of miracles, I had my own book contract in hand.

​​And then I found out still more patience is required. My memoir, Mango Rash: Coming of Age in the Land of Frangipani and Fanta, is due out in October of this year—a wait of another nine months, made up of a multitude of mini-waits. Right now, I’m waiting for my editor’s notes so I can begin another round of revisions. Then I’ll be waiting for more editorial input on final tweaks. And so on, and so on.

​Meanwhile, I’m suppressing the urge to fire off nervous-newbie question after question to my editor, knowing that she’s swamped with other projects right now and trusting that she will provide whatever information and guidance I need as I need it. Patience. Patience.
 
In that spirit, I’ve rounded up an assortment of wisdom on the subject to share with you today.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
- Samuel Johnson

​Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.
- Saadi

​The creative people I admire seem to share many characteristics: A fierce restlessness. Healthy cynicism. A real world perspective. An ability to simplify. Restraint. Patience. A genuine balance of confidence and insecurity. And most importantly, humanity.
- David Droga

I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.
- Lao Tzu

​Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
- John Quincy Adams

​The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.
- Arnold H. Glasow

​Having patience is one of the hardest things about being human. We want to do it now, and we don't want to wait. Sometimes we miss out on our blessing when we rush things and do it on our own time.
- Deontay Wilder

​Have patience with all things, But, first of all with yourself.
-  Saint Francis de Sales

​If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.
- Hal Borland

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.
- May Sarton

​Patience is the companion of wisdom.
- Augustine of Hippo

​Despite the common misconception, having patience doesn't mean making a pact with the devil of denial, ignoring our emotions and aspirations. It means being wholeheartedly engaged in the process that's unfolding, rather than yanking up our carrots, ripping open a budding flower, demanding a caterpillar hurry up and get that chrysalis stage over with.
-  Sharon Salzberg in “The Power of Patience,” Awakin.org, February 10, 2014

​The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.
- Erik Erikson

From the beginning, I have tried to keep HeartWood politically neutral, partly as a haven from all the discord around us, and partly because plenty of other outlets exist for expressing my political views, if I wish to do so.

I'm not about to change course here, but I do want to remind readers that we have an important midterm election coming up next week. I encourage you to vote!

In case you need more encouragement, here are some other people's thoughts on voting and democracy.

Voting is like alchemy—taking an abstract value and breathing life into it. Voting is the expression of our commitment to ourselves, one another, this country and this world.
-- Sharon Salzberg

Every election is determined by the people who show up.
-- Larry Sabato

​Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.
-- Abraham Lincoln

​Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

​Voting is a civic sacrament—the highest responsibility we have as Americans.
-- Christine Pelosi

​As I think of it, democracy isn't like a Sunday suit to be brought out and worn only for parades. It's the kind of a life a decent man leads, it's something to live for and to die for.
-- Dalton Trumbo

​Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

​Democracy is the only system capable of reflecting the humanist premise of equilibrium or balance. The key to its secret is the involvement of the citizen.
-- John Ralston Saul

​Not voting is disrespecting the best of what this nation stands for.
-- Thomas Hauser

​Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy.
-- Jesse Jackson

Voting is the foundational act that breathes life into the principle of the consent of the governed.
-- DeForest Soaries

​Ever since I switched from weekly posts to a twice-a-month posting schedule, I've been depriving you, dear readers, of the end-of-month collections of wisdom that many of you have told me you enjoy. When I noticed that this month has an extra Wednesday, I thought I'd throw in a bonus post with tidbits I've been collecting over the summer.

​Be tender to each other, teach a kid to read, laugh, be more tender than yesterday, repeat, ad infinitum.
-- Brian Doyle

​It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin

​Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me.
-- Carlos Fuentes

​Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.
-- Theodore Roethke

​In a way, nobody sees a flower, really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time—like to have a friend takes time.
-- Georgia O'Keeffe

​Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up.
-- David Orr

​The quest for knowledge can be never-ending, because when you find out one thing, you want to know more. It's the joy of being a human: we're curiosity with arms and legs.
-- Sylvia Earle, The Sun magazine, July 2018

​Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
-- Truman Capote

​My theory is that everyone, at one time or another, has been at the fringe of society in some way: an outcast in high school, a stranger in a foreign country, the best at something, the worst at something, the one who's different. Being an outsider is the one thing we all have in common.
-- Alice Hoffman

​The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.
-- Plutarch

​The most solid advice . . . for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
-- William Saroyan

​Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.
-- Muriel Rukeyser

 ​The heart pounds away, day after day, so synced up to our every movement we don't even notice. Yet it sustains us. Soft and vulnerable beneath our breast, it's no wonder this big, red muscle is the universal symbol for loving and feeling. To live is to feel. To love is to survive together. Our tender hearts connect our inner worlds with the lives all around us.
-- Claire Ciel Zimmerman, Mindful magazine, June 2017

​[The waves] move across a faint horizon, the rush of love and the surge of grief, the respite of peace and then fear again, the heart that beats and then lies still, the rise and fall and rise and fall of all of it, the incoming and the outgoing, the infinite procession of life. And the ocean wraps the earth, a reminder. The mysteries come forward in waves.
-- Susan Casey

On the last Wednesday of every month, I serve up a potpourri of advice, inspiration and other tidbits I've come across in recent weeks. This month -- this week, in fact -- finds us commemorating both Earth Day and Arbor Day. In the spirit of those two observances, here's a collection of quotes about nature and the planet on which we live.

As a bonus, I'm including at the end of this post, some of my favorite nature shots from our recent visit to the Southwest.

Love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need -- if only we had the eyes to see.
-- Edward Abbey

Find your place on the planet, dig in, and take responsibility from there.
​-- Gary Snyder

The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic. The Earth was absolutely round. I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space.
-- Alexey Leonov, Russian cosmonaut

The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightning and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees -- all of these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related.
​-- Thomas Berry

The earth is a living thing. Mountains speak, trees sing, lakes can think, pebbles have a soul, rocks have power.
-- Henry Crow Dog

When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what spiders do.  Or what weather does. This sustains me very well indeed.
-- E.B. White, One Man's Meat

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.
​-- Rachel Carson

Nature repairs her ravages -- but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.
-- George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

What is the use of a house if you  haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
-- Henry David Thoreau

Loyd: "It has to do with keeping things in balance . . . It's like the spirits have made a deal with us . . . The spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities, and we're saying: . . . We appreciate the rain, we appreciate the sun, we appreciate the deer we took . . . You've gone to a lot of trouble, and we'll try to be good guests."

Codi: "Like a note you'd send somebody after you stayed in their house?"

Loyd: "Exactly like that. 'Thanks for letting me sleep on your couch. I took some beer out of the refrigerator, and I broke a coffee cup. Sorry. I hope it wasn't your favorite one.' "
-- Barbara Kingsolver, ​Animal Dreams

And now, for a little more nature appreciation . . . 

Once again, it's time for our end-of-month roundup of wise words. No particular theme this month--or so I thought until I assembled all the tidbits I'd been collecting. Then I realized there were several on communication, freedom, and hope. Hmmmmm. Interesting.

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
​-- Rabindranath Tagore

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
​-- Peter F. Drucker

We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us, and we do it with political systems . . . It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better . . . Blaming is a way to protect our hearts, to try to protect what is soft and open and tender in ourselves. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground.
-- Pema Chödrön

Grace is beauty of form under the influence of freedom
-- Friedrich Schiller

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
​-- Lewis B. Smedes

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
​-- Howard Zinn

It's easy to see the good in others if that's what you decide to do.
​-- Ann Patchett

Everybody on TV exercises his or her right to express dogmatic beliefs at top volume, but we almost never see a model for deep, attentive listening. The value of genuinely being in each other's presence, regardless of whether we happen to agree, seems to be almost completely lost in our social discourse. That's why we get so little meaning from all our public arguments. It seems that we don't even know how to facilitate genuine presence, the kind of authentic being with each-other that may actually bring about real, positive change.
--  Jacob Needleman, "Beyond Belief," The Sun, ​December 2011

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion, The great task in life is to find reality.
​-- Iris Murdoch

What we want hasn't changed for thousands of years because as far as we can tell the human template hasn't changed either. We still want the purse that will always be filled with gold, and the Fountain of Youth. We want the table that will cover itself with delicious food whenever we say the word, and that will be cleaned up afterwards by invisible servants . . . We want cute, smart children who will treat us with the respect we deserve. We want to be surrounded by music, and by ravishing scents and attractive visual objects. We don't want to be too hot or too cold. We want to dance. We want to speak with the animals. We want to be envied. We want to be immortal. We want to be as gods.

But in addition, we want wisdom and justice. We want hope. We want to be good.
-- Margaret Atwood

Friends have been foremost in my mind this month, partly because of all the  wonderful cards, emails and calls that came my way on my birthday. But this month has also been a trying time for many friends who've been dealing with illness and loss, and I hold them in my heart.

With all of that in mind, I'm dedicating this month's Last Wednesday Wisdom to friendship, with a collection of quotes on the subject. Incidentally, tracking the quotes down turned out to be a bigger challenge than I expected. While a Google search turns up loads of friendship quotes, confirming their sources isn't so easy. For instance, I discovered that one popular quote attributed to Albert Camus may have originated in the 1970s as an Iowa high school class motto. Other quotes are correctly attributed, but taken out of context.

I did uncover a valuable resource in the course of researching quotes, though. On his blog, The Quote Investigator, author Garson O'Toole investigates the origins of popular quotations. While he hasn't investigated all the quotes I'm citing here, he did clear up confusion about several. So cheers to Garson O'Toole—and to friends!

I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself . . . It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
​-- C.S. Lewis

“Why did you do all this for me?” he asked. “I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.”
“You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”
-- E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

But please remember . . . that no person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended.
-- Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose

Friendship is the bestiest thing that comes to life.
​-- Marilyn Monroe

On the last Wednesday of every month, I serve up a potpourri of advice, inspiration and other tidbits I've come across in recent weeks. On this wintry Wednesday, I've gathered up an assortment of thoughts about the season and the pastimes--reading, writing, music, laughter, gatherings with friends--that help us get through it.

And if all of that doesn't warm you up enough, I'm throwing in a winter getaway at the end: a little jaunt down to Memphis to recap our visit to Graceland a few months ago. Believe it or not, there's a connection here. Though this isn't something I would normally have on my calendar, I happened to hear on the radio that Elvis's birthday was January 8. So come on along to Graceland for a belated birthday celebration. You just might get a taste of peanut butter-banana ice cream. It's never too cold for that!

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.
-- Victor Hugo, poet, author, playwright

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
​-- Haruki Murakami, author

Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything . . . It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus.
-- Enid Bagnold, author and playwright

The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.
-- Christopher Morley, author

What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world.
​-- Anne Lamott, author

There are more truths in a good book than its author meant to put into it.
-- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, author and playwright

I'm not even going to try for a graceful segue, except to say, "And now, for something completely different . . . "

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
-- Ray Bradbury

Genuine compassion comes from the fact that you see your own limitations: you wish to be kind, and you find that you aren't. Then, instead of beating yourself up, you see that that's what all human beings are up against, and you begin to have . . . genuine compassion for the human condition.
-- Pema Chödrön

On the late-afternoon streets, everyone hurries along, going about their own business. Who is the person walking in front of you on the rain-drenched sidewalk? He is covered with an umbrella, and all you can see is a dark coat and the shoes striking the puddles. And yet this person is the hero of his own life story. He is the love of someone's life. And what he can do may change the world. Imagine being him for a moment.

And then continue on your own way.
​-- Vera Nazarian

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.
-- Rachel Carson

Above all, don't fear the difficult moments. The best always comes from them.
​-- Rita Levi-Montalcini

The happiness of life . . . is made up of minute fractions -- the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a gentle word, a heartfelt compliment.
​-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.
​-- Søren Kierkegaard

The human experience of aging is interwoven with vulnerability. And what if it's OK to be vulnerable? What if that's the point? What if wisdom and connection, depth and richness all spring from the shimmer of impermanence? You don't have to pretend the sensations of aging are comfortable, or pleasant, or wanted. But what you can do is be present as it all bubbles up -- the whole goopy,  horrifying, colorful mess called being alive.
-- Elaine Smookler, "Anti-Aging? No Thanks," Mindful magazine, April 2017.

A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.
-- Frederick William Faber

Always be a little kinder than is necessary.
​-- Sir J.M. Barrie