Quotes from the Classics: June
Happy Solstice, everyone! We’re really in the swing of it now! If you’re in the northern hemisphere, you know all the people are doing all the things. Air conditioners are running full speed even as we venture out to birthday parties, barbecues, and lakeside picnics. It can be so fun and it can also be uber exhausting if we don't pace ourselves. If you’re like me, you can benefit greatly from saying yes to things that light you up AND the most beautiful no you can muster to things that don’t. See my May post for more on that. I don’t always get it right but when I come close, I’m able to enjoy this season of full bloom so much better!
Happy Solstice, everyone! We’re really in the swing of it now! If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, you know all the people are doing all the things. Air conditioners are running full speed even as we venture out to birthday parties, barbecues, and lakeside picnics. It can be so fun and it can also be uber exhausting if we don't pace ourselves. If you’re like me, you can benefit greatly from saying yes to things that light you up AND the most beautiful NO you can muster to things that don’t. See my May post for more on that. I don’t always get it right but when I come close, I’m able to enjoy this season of full bloom so much better!
Flowers and bubbles by Raquel Hamner The_Candid
Besides being a time when pacing is a must, June feels like such a turning point because, well, it is. Hate to be a downer, folks, but the year is almost half over. What?! Dang! While it’s crazy to think the minutes have ticked by that quickly, we’re not shopping for Christmas gifts just yet. It’s actually a really good time to check in with what you wanted to accomplish at the beginning of the year. The blueprint for the plant is in the seed and now that the seeds are starting to show themselves, we can see where we’ve been spending our precious time and what we’ve been nurturing. Is it what you intended? Are you surprised? Did you consciously choose or are your unconscious intentions running the show?
June asks us to look and face reality (which can sometimes take courage), to review and reassess, to celebrate the wins so far, and to course correct if necessary. It’s also fraught with hope because it reminds us there is still an opportunity to become who we are meant to be. There is always that opportunity. Here are some quotes from the classics to keep you inspired:
“The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.”
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
“If the day and night be such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more immortal - that is your success.”
“Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly.”
“In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different.”
“Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came; and if the village had been beautiful at first, it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness. The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in the earlier months, had now burst into strong life and health; and stretching forth their green arms over the thirsty ground, converted open and naked spots into choice nooks, where was a deep and pleasant shade from which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped in sunshine, which lay stretched out beyond. The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green; and shed her richest perfumes abroad. It was the prime and vigour of the year; all things were glad and flourishing.”
“It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.”
Love in all things,
April Eileen
P.S. I don’t know if we’d consider that last one a classic but it’s just so dang pretty. ;-)
Quotes from the Classics: May
We are in full swing, folks! The showers did in fact bring flowers and maybe some frenzy too. May showcases full-on evidence that we are alive - the bustle, the to and fro, the busy. There are coffee dates to be had, lighter clothes to pull out of storage, and plenty of weeds to pull and while I agree wholeheartedly with Wayne Dyer - “the difference between a flower and a weed is a judgment,” - I still spent three hours last week searching for lettuce and carrot sprouts.
We’re here, we’re alive, we’re excited AND we’re down on the ground, tending, sometimes taxed, and day-to-daying too. If you’re like me (the most introvertive extrovert any of you know), you couldn’t be more pleased about the sunshine and you might also be secretly dreading that dinner party or missing those quiet evenings of journaling and reflection. What a conundrum.
And, we’re off to the races! The showers did in fact bring flowers and maybe some frenzy too. May showcases full-on evidence that we are alive - the bustle, the to and fro, the busy. There are coffee dates to be had, lighter clothes to pull out of storage, and plenty of weeds to pull and while I agree wholeheartedly with Wayne Dyer - “the difference between a flower and a weed is a judgment,” - I still spent three hours last week searching for lettuce and carrot sprouts.
We’re here, we’re alive, we’re excited AND we’re down on the ground, tending, sometimes taxed, and day-to-daying too. If you’re like me (the most introvertive extrovert any of you know), you couldn’t be more pleased about the sunshine and you might also be secretly dreading that dinner party or missing those quiet evenings of journaling and reflection. What a conundrum.
No fear! We get to be both. We can be excited and expansive and abundant and also take care of ourselves. It just takes a little bit of adulting - not the 9-5 job adulting but the I-am-40-years-old-and-actually-this-is-my-life variety. We can be choicy and deliberate and work with this quickly rising May energy to do and make and be and grow whatever we want. We can listen to ourselves and be cognizant of when we need to take a break or move or drink some water. And we can leverage the dreaded NO.
I’ve heard this a million times before and still felt anxiety or the need to lie and make something up every time I was confronted with the need to say no. Of course, more self-Love was a game-changer and part of that journey included more focus on my yesses. My desires and wants are legit, gifted by the Universe, and really important to the thread of humanity. Sounds epic but I believe it now. If I hold my yesses that way, it leaves little room for stuff I don’t want to do. Think about it. “Guys, I can’t do the thing because I’m planning something cool for my new business! Or I’m doing this new meditation I found ! Or <insert other really fun, really exciting thing, requiring an exclamation point at the end of the sentence, HERE>!
It’s exponentially easier to say no when you’re excited about something else. So, what do you want? Who do you want to be? What do you want to create? Let’s be like the ants and get some stuff done, well, maybe with a little grasshopper fun too! Check out the quotes below that are certainly part of larger works but also capture May’s unique essence and energy, and also some things I would definitely say yes to. Enjoy!
Bee by Boris Smokrovic
“Come to the orchard in Spring. There is light and wine, and sweethearts in the pomegranate flowers.”
“She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! ”
“To see a World in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour. ”
“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.”
“Earth laughs in flowers.”
“Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven’t time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”
“It’s a spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want to—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”
Love in all things,
April Eileen
Quotes from the Classics: April
It’s Spring at last! Yet April necessitates patience and patience, by definition, is hard. Otherwise it would just be waiting. April provides an even more tangible promise of euphoria, while simultaneously requiring us to sit a while longer in transition. Our expectations begin to get the better of us. The snow has given way - well, usually (I’m looking at you Ohio) - but to what? There are days of warmth and sunshine to be sure, but very often there is rain and even a blustery reminder of the winter past. I hurry to my community garden plot to water my plants and keep them from burning up in near 90 degree weather, only to hurry back two days later to cover them and protect them from possible frost. “Gah!,” I project in my being. “Just hurry up and get there…arrive already,” my essence seems to say. But there are gifts here, in this space and time of year, to ease the hearts of even the most impatient.
It’s Spring at last! Yet April necessitates patience and patience, by definition, is hard. Otherwise it would just be waiting. April provides an even more tangible promise of euphoria, while simultaneously requiring us to sit a while longer in transition. Our expectations begin to get the better of us. The snow has given way - well, usually (I’m looking at you Ohio) - but to what? There are days of warmth and sunshine to be sure, but very often there is rain and even a blustery reminder of the winter past. I hurry to my community garden plot to water my plants and keep them from burning up in near 90 degree weather, only to hurry back two days later to cover them and protect them from possible frost. “Gah!,” I project in my being. “Just hurry up and get there…arrive already,” my essence seems to say.
But there are gifts here, in this space and time of year, to ease the hearts of even the most impatient. The sprouts and blooms make me happy, as do the bright shades of green that seem to capture light and life, not yet having matured into deep forests or emeralds or sages. My youngest daughter gleefully celebrates every time a new baby plant boldly reaches toward the sun, displaying itself in its egg carton cup, bound soon enough for the community garden. The rain offers peace and calm and all of nature takes a breath before an inevitable explosion of color and excitement. It all seems to tell of what is to come, while bringing joy right now. Such is April. Be patient my friends. Honor February’s fallow ground, lean into March’s blustery winds, look forward to the May flowers, AND enjoy life now in its visible state of becoming.
Check out some of these classic quotes about renewal, freshness, beginnings, growth, and Love. By the way, April means not only “to open” but is also named for Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of Love. How fitting. Enjoy!
Sprouts by Markus Spiske
“Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby”
“Beauty made you love, and love made you beautiful.”
“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.”
“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light
The glory and the freshness of a dream.”
“Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love.”
“With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes, the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come… This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall… When the cold rains kep on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had dies for no reason. In those days, though, the spring always cam finally bit it was frightening that it had nearly failed.”
“In time of silver rain
The butterflies
Life silken wings
To catch a rainbow cry,
And trees put forth
New leaves to sing
In joy beneath the sky
As down the roadway
Passing boys and girls
Go singing, too,
In time of silver rain
When spring
And life
Are new.”
“Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.”
Love in all things,
April Eileen