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Statement of Purpose For This Site

You might well ask— why are you doing this?

Well, I’m putting together my own inspiration as I continue my lifelong search for meaning and beauty. Absent will be my congenital obsession with justice. My Facebook page has a surfeit of that.

I’m learning also that every site has its own DNA and that it will resist pressure to be something it’s not. My Facebook page became something I never imagined when I started it. My intentions influenced it, but it grew into something unexpected. Maybe it pulled things out of me I didn’t know were needing expression—justice, for one thing—towards the earth, towards other life forms, toward humans.

Because of my engagement with found content on Facebook I began to recalibrate my focus on what is inherently important to me and for me to say, namely that kindness is paramount, beauty and meaning are central and connectedness is essential. This site will focus on what I find exceptionally beautiful or fascinating. It has to have a wow-factor for me to include it.

The current situation in our country and in the world is frightening, we know that. There is no lack of news about the dystopia the world is sliding into. Every example carries a little hit of poison to your system. Yes, we need to be aware of what’s actually going on but it seems to me we need more news of the beauties in our world.

I’ve created animafire.com because I became dissatisfied with that Facebook page. It seemed to me it had become a bit overburdened with examples of what’s wrong. This site and my Facebook thread represent two related areas of interest because they both come from me, but they are distinct. It being true that a site has a will of its own and that I am not a dictator in absolute control, both pages can now follow their inherent missions.

I can’t tell precisely where these sites are going but they seem to be going toward creating a vision of a kinder, more just, more beautiful world.

I dedicate this site to the miracle we are all living.

I’ve added a donate button if you wish to support this search for beauty and meaning. Any help to buy another book or paint another painting is greatly appreciated.

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Each man had only one genuine vocation – to find the way to himself….His task was to discover his own destiny – not an arbitrary one – and to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness.”
~Hermann Hesse

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Rilke

“The point of marriage (partnership) is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”

Rainer Maria Rilke
~~via Rowen White

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Let me fall if I must fall. The one I will become will catch me.

  • Baal Shem Tov