... May I live this day Compassionate of heart, Clear in word, Gracious in awareness, Courageous in thought, Generous in love. - John O'Donohue

The beauty that emerges from woundedness is a beauty infused with feeling, a beauty different from the beauty of landscape and the cold perfect form. This is a beauty that has suffered its way through the ache of desolation until the words or music emerged to equal the hunger and desperation at its heart.

It must also be said that not all woundedness succeeds in finding its way through to beauty of form. Most woundedness remains hidden, lost inside forgotten silence. Indeed, in every life there is some wound that continues to weep secretly, even after years of attempted healing. Where woundedness can be refined into beauty a wonderful transfiguration takes place.

Life is incredibly contingent and unexpected.

There is incredible symmetry in a tree, between its inner life and its outer life,between its rooted memory and its external active presence. A tree grows up and down at once and produces enough branches too incarnate it’s wild divinity. It doesn’t limit itself- it reaches for the sky and it reaches for the source, all in one kind of seamless movement. So I think landscape is an incredible, mystical teacher, and when you begin to tune into its sacred presence, something shifts inside you.