I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.
–T.S. Eliot, excerpt from “East Coker”, Four Quartets
This echoes w/ me in these adrift times, out here just keeping the oar in, no real perceptible movement the way it used to be, no wind, no real hope, either so what is left? A text, a little more attention, being in the school of life but not in the front row