Monday, July 19, 2010

Thoreau

from Walden
"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

I think the beautiful thing about marriage that I'm discovering lately is that I have someone to share this with. And if one of us is more naturally inclined to dream and the other more naturally a worker, then we each get to pull each other towards our life-giving dreams and in the beautiful work of building a foundation for that future. And when your dreams are not merely dreams for worldly success, but dreams that attempt to live as God intended...to return to the original order of this creation...then the building of that foundation together is restorative and healing and beautiful.

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