The kingdom of heaven — whatever that place is to you — does not care about how many books you have published nor how many emails you have answered. Just imagine dying without truly understanding just how many shades of blue the sky contains?

Source: If I Am Tired, I Will Rest

By: Lisa Marie Basile

I have been indoctrinated by poverty, by an ancestry of exhaustion, of work, of not-having, of lack, of hunger, of emigration. I have been indoctrinated by men, by white men, by archaic standards of enoughness. By concepts of value that are in direct opposition to my soul. By the grimacing machine that says no to staring out of windows, no to drinking coffee in silence, no to simply breathing. By an expectation that downtime must be turned into learning languages or instruments or launching projects.

I have never been told that it’s okay to:

• to simply gaze upon the yellow of a flower
• to peer into a terra-cotta pot of basil and to be alive alongside its tiny green body
• to giddily decide between coconut and vanilla coffee as the sky cracks with light
• to hold my hand against my heart as it rains
• to pray not for response or solution, but to simply say “I am here.”
• to write for the sake of writing
• to experience value as giving dignity and grace to others.