Art by Steve Hanks, Bookends
One easy way that you can tell which books in my library have touched or taught me the most would be to notice which are the most marked up. I came across a book just the other day that is filled with yellow highlights, it’s Dawna Markova’s, “I Will Not Die an Unlived Life.” Beautiful and wise. Reminding us of what’s sacred, asking us what it would look like to live our lives “fully, sensually alive, and passionately, on purpose.” Encouraging us to live days that are “a sweet and slow ceremony” and nudging us as winter approaches to let go of “what no longer is alive, to get bare enough to find the bones of what is important” to us.
“I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit. ”
~Dawna Markova~
Spirituality, Therapy, and the Good Life 