30th of June 2020

Today's reflection and doodle have been created by Associate Chaplain, Geoffrey Baines.

[W]e are most poetic when we are most in tune with created Presence – person, place, thing. Which means that we may not divide life into poem and un-poem but see that experience itself may be poetic.* (M. C. Richards)

Desire paths and desire lines are the names given to the unofficial paths that appear across urban landscapes because they work better than the official ones architects and planners have put in place.

There are desire lines running through our lives, too.

Life comes with many formal or official paths that are put in place by the “architects and planners” of culture and society and all their fractals, many being necessary or well-intended, yet so many aren’t quite in the right places.

Here are some tests to help see if we’ve found our desire lines, which I borrow from Seth Godin; the best desire paths:

Open us to our passions rather than inertia Create originality and generosity rather than dogma Encourage service and adventure rather than ease Follow convictions rather than wilt under criticism Are willing to apologise rather than blag it Offer kindness rather than trying to be clever at the expense of others Find us as builders rather than a cynics.**

(*From M. C. Richards’ Centering.) (**From Seth Godin’s blog: Choices.)