Someone else also has a new book  coming out the same week I do. I want to say he's my friend. I consider him so although we have never met. But you can know someone well through their words, especially when those words are poetry.  And I own all of his audio lectures, so I know the sound of his voice, his sense of humor, his lilting cadence. But wait, I also saw him in person last April. He's personable, his Irish/English accent charming, but more to the point, he is so right-on with the truth about life. Here's an excerpt from his newsletter that I received today. Read it and you'll understand what I mean.

"The practice of radical simplification, however, might not mean living in a desire-less, enlightened state, but simply catching our desires as close to the centre of our experience as possible.  (my emphasis)

Practically, we can catch a need for an expensive new sports car early on in the process by buying a second hand version of the same, we can catch it even earlier, nearer to the center, by renting one every now and again, without having to go to expense of maintaining it, we can catch it very close in indeed, by attempting to live out directly the very qualities that underlie the desire itself. Without the prop of the car, we might try to cultivate a certain air of freedom as if the wind was always in our hair. The withdrawal from the literal, over- concretized periphery where everything is counterfeiting for something closer in, almost always leaves us dealing in another more imaginative currency at the center."

How spot-on is that? Isn't that what we are all doing, through our art, our relationships, our every desire? To recapture the beauty & wonder present in the simpliest of things: the wind in our hair, the glow of a dandelion under your chin, the sweet smell of lilac or honeysuckle? I wonder…is Christmas decorating  just an effort to capture the wonder & magic that is snow?

What a beautiful reminder David Whyte gifted me with today. I pass this gift on to you. 
Above photo from David's website.