There’s No Place Like Home. ✨

The veil is thin here. It’s thin everywhere. Of course it’s fucking thin. Who ever heard of a thick veil? That shit’s lightweight, even sheer.

When the Baal Schem, the founder of Hasidism, had a difficult task before him, he would go to a certain place in the woods, light a fire and meditate in prayer; and what he had set out to perform was done.  When a generation later, the Maggid of Meseritz was faced with the same task, he would go to the same place in the woods, and say: “We can no longer light a fire, but we can pray.”  And everything happened according to his will.  When another generation had passed, Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov was faced with the same task, [and] he would go to the same place in the woods, and say: “We can no longer light a fire, nor do we know the secret meditations belonging to the prayers, but we know the place in the woods, and that can be sufficient.”  And sufficient it was.  But when another generation had passed and Rabbi Israel of Rishin was called upon to perform the task, he sat down in his golden chair, in his castle, and said: “We cannot light the fire, we cannot speak the prayers, we do not know the place, but we can tell the story of all this.”  And, once again, this was sufficient.

Gershom Scholem, from Giorgio Agamben’s book The Fire and the Tale

The Angel With The Flaming Sword - Edwin Howland Blashfield

Neil Gaiman: 'Narnia made me want to write, to do that magic trick' | Fiction | The Guardian

the Guardian

Neil Gaiman: 'Narnia made me want to write, to do that magic trick'

The American Gods and Good Omens author on his friendship with Gene Wolfe, crying over Diana Wynne Jones and falling under the spell of CS L

Good morning @neil-gaiman, thank you so much for this.  I'm psyched to add your books to my list!  I learned to read my first words with the Chronicles of Narnia.  Dawn Treader and Magician's Nephew are my favorites.  It must be the portals.

The two ADHD moods:

- I can’t do it

- I can’t stop doing it

Blessing for the Longest Night

All throughout these months as the shadows have lengthened, this blessing has been gathering itself, making ready, preparing for this night.

It has practiced walking in the dark, traveling with its eyes closed, feeling its way by memory by touch by the pull of the moon even as it wanes.

So believe me when I tell you this blessing will reach you even if you have not light enough to read it; it will find you even though you cannot see it coming.

You will know the moment of its arriving by your release of the breath you have held so long; a loosening of the clenching in your hands, of the clutch around your heart; a thinning of the darkness that had drawn itself around you.

This blessing does not mean to take the night away but it knows its hidden roads, knows the resting spots along the path, knows what it means to travel in the company of a friend.

So when this blessing comes, take its hand. Get up. Set out on the road you cannot see.

This is the night when you can trust that any direction you go, you will be walking toward the dawn.

—Jan Richardson from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

Sometimes you just need to go off the grid and get your soul right.

(via aquietcottagelife)

There are clubs people can join to hang out and make their own coffins. New Zealand is home to at least a dozen coffin clubs, where elderly folks gather to build and decorate their own caskets. Participants say that, aside from saving money, the club also serves as a support group that brings people together and helps them face the inevitable. Source