by Kim Ort | Jan 11, 2017 | Questions, Themes, Topics
Last year, I spent a weekend with a friend at a retreat, where we experienced the wisdom and poetry of David Whyte. One line in particular from Whyte stuck with me. If you want a beautiful life, start asking beautiful questions. My friend and I talked about what this...
by Kim Ort | Oct 19, 2016 | Abstraction, Attention, Essence, Going Abstract, Inspiration, People, Photography, Workshops
“I began to realize that my identity depended not upon any beliefs I had, but on how much attention I was paying to things that were other than myself. And as you deepen this intentionality and attention, you start to broaden and deepen your own sense of...
by Kim Ort | May 4, 2016 | Books, Consolations, Essence
Why are we so afraid of silence? David Whyte, in his book, Consolations, says this. Silence is frightening, an intimation of the end, the graveyard of fixed identities. Real silence puts any present understanding to shame; orphans us from certainty; leads us beyond...
by Kim Ort | Apr 12, 2016 | Attention, Books, Consolations, Contemplation, Visual Journalling
“The gradual realization of self takes place concurrent with the discovery of the world around us. It is a reciprocal, relational process.” ~ David Ulrich – Art and Self-Knowledge Can we ever really know ourselves? In his book, Consolations, David...
by Kim Ort | Mar 2, 2016 | Attention, Books, Consolations, Contemplation, Inspiration, People
Gratitude is a word that has become something of a cliche. It can seem pious in the face of some of the many tragedies happening on a daily basis or the difficulties we face in life. Yet, the practice of this one word has incredible power to reframe and even overcome...
by Kim Ort | Jan 12, 2016 | Books, Consolations
In David Whyte’s book, Consolations (paid link), he describes longing as a “seasonal emergence from within, a ripening from the core, a seed growing in our bodies.” Perhaps some of our longings are a recognition of something deep inside, a vague...
by Kim Ort | Dec 22, 2015 | Books, Consolations, Contemplation, Photography, Visual Journalling, Workshops
“Joy is a meeting place, of deep intentionality and of self-forgetting, the bodily alchemy of what lies inside us in communion with what formerly seemed outside, the raw engagement with the passing seasonality of existence.” ~ David Whyte, Consolations...
by Kim Ort | Oct 28, 2015 | Books, Consolations, Contemplative Photographers, Place
“Genius is best understood in its original and ancient sense: describing the specific underlying quality of a given place as in the Latin Genius Loci, the spirit of a place, it describes a form of meeting, of air and land and trees, perhaps a hillside, a cliff...
by Kim Ort | Sep 29, 2015 | Books, Consolations
The measure of our courage is the measure of our willingness to embrace disappointment, to turn towards it rather than away, the understanding that every real conversation of life involves having our hearts broken somewhere along the way. ~ David Whyte, Consolations...
by Kim Ort | Sep 22, 2015 | Books, Consolations
In this week’s reflection on “destiny,” I gravitated towards David Whyte’s description of “the everyday conversational essence of destiny: our future influenced by the very way we hold the conversation of life itself.” Destiny is...
