“I call up my names: Woman who has been born in the arms of a woman and welcomed home. I shout truth teller, silence breaker, life embracer, death no longer fearing, woman reunited with her child self. I sing woman who is daughter, sister, lover and mother to herself. I hum woman planter, gatherer, healer. I drum woman warrior, siren, woman who stands firmly on her feet, woman who reaches inward to her center and outward to stars. I am woman who is child no longer, woman who is making herself sane, whole.”
-Andrea R. Canaan
“If you have an extended lifespan without extended awareness you’re just dying longer, not living longer.”
-Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
“You got to know what day it is. You have to own your days and name them, each on of them, or else the years go right by and none of them belong to you.”
-Jason Robarts in “A Thousand Clowns”
“When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.”
-Indian Proverb
“Aspire to inspire before you expire.”
-Unknown
“This is what you should do: Love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people….and your flesh shall be a great poem.”
-Walt Whitman
“The metaphor of journey is both powerful and limited. True, life may be seen as a sequence of departures and arrivals; sometimes we do leave important places and relationships behind. But more often they undergo transformation. It is closer to the truth to say that over time some parts of us remain constant and some change. Patterns woven into our sense of self in one environment often remain a part of the tapestry of our inner life even as we change. I never leave home entirely behind. We grow and become both by letting go and holding on, leaving and staying journeying and abiding. A good life is a balance of home and pilgrimage.”
-From Common Fire. Daloz Keen & Parks
“And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
-Abraham Lincoln
“Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
-Leroy Paige
“Old age, to the unlearned, is winter; to the learned, is harvest time.”
-Unknown
“If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us.”
-George Eliot
“Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be.
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith “A whole I planned.
Youth shows but half: Trust God: See all nor be afraid.”
-Robert Browning
“And where is he being borne? To that place that has been called the House of God. Teilhard speaks of the end of life; but the hope that comes at the end of life is based on experiences of love transforming us now, and in experiences of God in our lives now, and in the trust in Him that allows us to surrender in the way Teilhard prayed to surrender. The spiritual journey of aging is like grasping that pearl, full not only of gain but of loss. This is true not only in later life, but from the moment of our conception. For in order to be born; we must leave the comfort and security of the womb. In order to go to school, we must lose the comfort and security of our all day safe haven with our mother at home. In order to marry, we must lose the comfort and security of our status as a self-determining single being. No matter what we look at as growth, as achievement, as accomplishment, as new life, it always has a shadow side of loss. Every new birth is also a death.”
-Teilhard de Chardin, Priest and paleontologist
“When the signs of age begin to mark my body (and still more when they touch my mind); when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off strikes from without or is born within me; when the painful moment comes in which I suddenly awaken to the fact that I am ill or growing old; and above all at that last moment when I feel I am losing hold of myself and am absolutely passive within the hands of the great unknown forces that have formed me; in all those dark moments, O God, grant that I may understand that it is YOU (provided only my faith is strong enough) who are painfully parting the fibers of my being in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and bear me away with yourself.”
-Teilhard de Chardin, Priest and paleontologist
“Life is and we do not have too much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us, so be swift to love and make haste to be kind.”
-Henri-Frederic Amiel
“And in that moment Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later. For the first time he realized that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, our of a sense of duty and, perhaps, love, adopted the role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: A Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. An now that boy, that fool actor, had grown old and fragile and tired, wearier than ever at the thought of trying to hoist the Protector’s armor back onto his shoulders again, now, so for down the line.”
-Tom Wolfe, “The Bonfire of the Vanities”
“Go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.”
-Jimmy Carter
“The tragedy of man is not that man dies, but what dies within man while is alive.”
-Albert Schweitzer
“Old age is like everything else; to make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.”
-Fred Astaire
Forever Young
May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder strong
And may you climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And may the light surround you
May your ways be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
May you stay forever young
May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the wind changes shape
May your heart always be joyful
May your soul always be strong
And may you stay forever young
-Bob Dylan, Singer and Songwriter
“May you live all the days of your life.”
-Jonathan Swift
“The more you learn what to do with yourself, and the more you do for others, the more you will enjoy the abundant life.”
-William J.H. Boetcker
“We do not quit playing because we grow old; we grow old because we quit playing.”
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
“The universe is a single life comprising of one substance and one soul.”
-Marcus Aurelius
“There is a power above and behind us and we are the channel of it’s communication.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The more a man lays stress on fake possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying his life is.”
-Carl Jung
“It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?”
-Thoreau
“Each time of life has its own kind of love.”
-Tolstoy
“The greatest good fortune for the old is to have projects, to have days filled with useful and interesting work, to never be
bored.”
-Helen Nearing
“We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning.”
-Carl Jung
“Man cannot really improve himself without improving others.”
-Charles Dickens
“He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own.”
-Confucius
“Societies are renewed by people who believe in something, care about something, stand for something.”
-John Gardner
“To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.”
-Bernard M. Baruch, on observing his 85th birthday
“Every little deed counts…every word has power and we can, everyone, do our share to redeem the world.”
-Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
“This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
“It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.”
-Confucius
“When you cease to make a contribution you begin to die.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
-Goethe
“This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”
-Abraham Lincoln
E-mail: jay@BloomAnew.com
Cell: 503-381-2649
Bloom Anew 