A Good Good Read

"It was the last day of August -- an achingly beautiful, golden day when the air throbbed with cricket song and buzzed with dragonfly wings and smelled like ripening apples.
This was the sort of day you ought to be outside....To me, days like this one were holidays -- the word owes its origin to 'holy days', and I felt it a sacred duty to honour them. Even if it meant having to work till nine every night all the rest of the week, and both days of the weekend, on these brilliant, extraordinary days, we'd try to take an afternoon hike with Tess, or steal a few hours watching the birds at our favourite pond. Our friend David Carroll, a turtle expert, artist and author..., called this practice 'keeping an appointment with the season'. When the salamanders woke for their mass mating on the first warm rainy night in April, when the spotted turtles emerged from hibernation in March, on the moonlit nights when the wood turtles nest in June -- well, he just had to be there, no matter what." --pp.179-180

"Blessings, all. In each case, I hadn't found what I had hoped for or expected. Instead, I'd discovered something far more exciting or profound -- an unexpected insight, a surprise gift. And that's a pretty good working definition of a blessing. So go out into the world where your heart calls you. The blessings will come, I promise you that....I wish for you the insight to recognise the blessings as such, and sometimes this is hard. But you'll know it's a blessing if you are enriched and transformed by the experience. So be ready. There are great souls and teachers everywhere. It is your job to recognise them." --pp. 223-224

"Thank you for your great soul -- for that gaze into our hearts....Thank you for for showing us your heart -- for inviting us into such a happy heart." --p. 234

"Good, good pig. Big, good pig. Fine, fine swine. Good...good...good." --p. 183

"Christopher Hogwood knew how to relish the juicy savour of this fragrant, abundant, sweet, green world. To show us this would have been gift enough. But he showed us another truth as well. That a pig did not become bacon but lived fourteen years, pampered and adored till the day he died peacefully in his sleep -- that's proof that we need not 'be practical' all the time. We need not accept the rules that our society or species, family or fate seem to have written for us. We can choose a new way. We have the power to transform a story of sorrow into a story of healing. We can choose life over death. We can let love lead us home....one thing I know for sure: a great soul can appear among us at any time, in the form of any creature. I'm keeping my eyes open." --p. 241

All quotes are from the book "The Good Good Pig", written by Sy Montgomery. I obviously loved the book to pieces, most probably because I am an animal lover (and a fellow vegetarian!). However, for those who aren't as animal-friendly but are open to it, maybe those who like inspirational books, I highly recommend this book. As seen from the above quotes, as much as "The Good Good Pig" calls to our animal-loving compassionate hearts, it also calls to the inner child in us, never to cease being amazed, always to find something new, to be open to greatness, whether it be in an animal, a fellow human, a holy day, and so on.

To end, I leave with another quote, from p. 183:
"Some say happiness lands lightly on
you, like a butterfly. Sometimes this is so. But sometimes happiness
comes lumbering toward you, like a fat, satisfied pig -- and then
thuds, grunting, by your side."

Indeed.