In the spirit of spring cleaning, I decided to take advantage of the great tradition and immerse myself completely in the cleaning out of  closets, drawers, my car, and the biggest one of all: my computer. Documents half written, both personal and work related have been piling up over the year on my desktop, in random folders, and in the bottomless pit of my email account. It was time to plow through it all, save the gems and purge the trash, to make way for a nice new pile of creative confusion that I’ll find myself cleaning up next spring.

This process though tedious, had moments that felt as delicious as looking back through the memories of an old photo album. Thoughts and projects, both completed and abandoned, spurred many a trip down memory lane. As I plowed through an endless sea of electronic folders, I discovered a collection of words, not my own, that I’ve gathered over this past year. It is a broad and  diverse collection, though they share a common thread. All are words I find inspiring, thought provoking, and leave the corners of my mouth turned upward. So rather than write any more of my own words, I’m compelled to share some from others who have turned the written word into an art so graceful, so magical, and so exquisite, it’s as though it were a stroke of Picasso’s brush. Enjoy.

Take Time
Old English Prayer
Author Unknown

Take time to work, it is the price of success.
Take time to think, it is the source of power.
Take time to play, it is the secret of perpetual youth.
Take time to read, it is the foundation of wisdom.
Take time to be friendly, it is the road to happiness.
Take time to dream, it is hitching your wagon to a star.
Take time to love and be loved, it is the privilege of the gods.
Take time to look around, it is too short a day to be selfish.
Take time to laugh, it is the music of the soul.

Laughter
By David Wolfe

One is not taught in college
The key to ultimate knowledge
Laughter -
Charges, enlarges
Grasps, recreates
At accelerated rates
Renews, redefines
Erases wrinkled lines.
A closer look reveals
Everything is funny!
The future can only be sunny.
Laughter makes the world young.
Laughter speaks a universal tongue.
A winning smile
Lasts a long, long while.
When life becomes
Fun and laughter
You’ll open up a new chapter
And sow a seam
In what things mean
Laughter mends chaos and fright
With wisdom, light, and clever insight.
Laughter silences every thought
As it heals everything you’ve got.
Laughter seeks the highest beat
Can knock a grown man from his feet.
Shift ones mood
Is better than food.
Laughter is sunshine
In the home
Please let’s make that known.
No matter what’s done,
If it’s done with laughter,
It’s bound to live
Happily ever after.

The Dance
By Oriah Mountain Dreamer

I have sent you my invitation, the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living. Don’t jump up and shout, “Yes, this is what I want! Let’s do it!” Just stand up quietly and dance with me.
Show me how you follow your deepest desires, spiraling down into the ache within the ache. And I will show you how I reach inward and open outward to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, everyday.
Don’t tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart. Show me how you turn away from making another wrong without abandoning yourself when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.
Tell me a story of who you are, 
And see who I am in the stories I am living. And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.
Don’t tell me how wonderful things will be . . . some day. Show me you can risk being completely at peace, truly OK with the way things are right now in this moment, and again in the next and the next and the next. . .
I have heard enough warrior stories of heroic daring. Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall, the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will. What carries you to the other side of that wall, to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?
And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the clear, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other, let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving those we once loved out loud.
Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart. And I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.
Show me how you take care of business without letting business determine who you are. When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us shout that soul’s desires have too high a price, let us remind each other that it is never about the money.
Show me how you offer to your people and the world the stories and the songs you want our children’s children to remember, and I will show you how I struggle not to change the world, but to love it.
Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude, knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging. Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words, holding neither against me at the end of the day.
And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest intentions has died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of the breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.
Don’t say, “Yes!” 
Just take my hand and dance with me.

Maenad Prophecy from the Samye Monastery in Tibet

by Starhawk

When kings wage unjust war,

When poison fills the skies,

When the rich prey on the poor,

When hope for justice dies

When a spell lies o¹er the land,

Of malice and of lies,

Then a wild and fearless band

Of women shall arise

Crazy saints, yoginis,

Peering through the gloom,

Maenads and dakinis

Witches grab your brooms!

Sweep away the stench

Sweep away the sneers!

Sweep away the clench

Of hunger and of fears

Dance to feel the passion

Dance to wake the wild,

To honor deep compassion,

For the forest and the child,

Dance to keep the Arctic cool,

To keep the jungle green,

Dance for every holy fool,

For every wound unseen.

Dance for justice, dance for peace

Dance for life to thrive,

May beauty, health and joy increase

For every being alive

Dance in love, dance in wrath,

For chains to fall apart,

Dance to choose a better path,

Dance for strength of heart,

All across the nation,

Bankers quail and glower,

Cracked is the foundation

Of the bastions of power

Strong walls crumble,

Kings face their final hour,

An angry earth shall rumble,

Down shall fall the Tower.

And through its stones shall weave the roots

Of a living tree

That offers us its shining fruits

Of truth and liberty

Fruit to fill each empty hand

With sweet gifts of the earth

Dance to heal this bleeding land–

A new world comes to birth.