Recommendation: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days

Image from Maria Popova’s “The Marginalian” website

Introducing her divination cards, Maria Popova wrote, “If there is someone in your life who might enjoy this strange coping mechanism for the confusions of living, please do pass it along — it is those whispers between friends that wing our lonely labors with the sense of sympathy and kinship.”

A dear friend of mine thought to share these cards with me. They arrived on the day after one of my best friends (and wasbund and father of my children) passed. I’ve been choosing one at random every day since, for coping and comfort.

Describing them and their creation is too difficult for me at the moment, so I suggest you go to Popova’s website The Marginalian (which I also heartily recommend as an ongoing source of inspiration and creativity) to learn all about them.

Meanwhile, here’s what the card I chose today says:

Blessed is the person

who delights in seeing

the inner child in every one

and the magic in all creatures

who does not shun difficulty

and can turn with equal reverence

toward sorrow and joy

who can trust fear as

the balsam of courage

and pain as an instrument

for opening the heart

who can pause to notice

the delicate lustre of a lichen

and the undulations of the light

who dares to make hope

an axiom of being,

and is strong enough

to be changed by love.