✉️ From the Quiet Verse – Issue #9
Date: May 23, 2025
Theme: 🌿 The Threshold of Enough
A pause that isn't empty. A moment of quiet rest, where you're allowed to stop—without apology. This issue is about knowing you’re close enough, full enough, and brave enough to linger at the edge of “more.”
💌 Opening Reflection
Late May offers us a gift—
The permission to be still.
The tulips don’t try to out-bloom themselves.
The sky doesn’t rush the solstice.
And we, too, are invited to stay a while at the edge of fullness.
This issue holds space for that moment:
Before the next push. Before summer’s blaze.
The moment when you pause,
not because you’ve finished,
but because you’ve arrived at enough.
May this issue offer you your moment of arrival.
✍️ A Quiet Line
“But here, at this threshold,
the world you’re entering does not hurry.”
—Page Turner, from Threshold
🌱 From the Garden
Sometimes, we grow by resting.
Peonies don't bloom forever—they pause, wide open, until the breeze reminds them it’s okay to fade.
“One petal fell,
trembling, tender.
...
All of spring,
held in the trembling of a single promise—
begin again.”
—From Promise, Leaning Toward Light
So, too, we’re allowed to open slowly,
then just be.
💌 What I’m Carrying
The bravery of not pushing forward.
Of standing in the doorway of change and saying:
“I’ll cross when I’m ready. Not before.”
Sometimes, stillness is the most honest momentum, to sit at the table, savour the food, and admire the Chef's talent.
Here I stand, at the threshold—
of time, aged and wise,
my pages filled with stories,
under the celestial skies.
—From Dialogue of the Years, Threshold
📖 The Verse
🕊️ “Crossing the Threshold” – from Threshold
A quiet act of forgiveness unfolds. A woman dares to soften, to speak first, to rebuild something not quite broken—just paused.
“It’s a tender conversation,
delicate as a dance of confession and forgiveness.
As they part,
the air softens between them,
tinged with the promise of spring.
In her chest,
a bird’s wings unfurl,
hopeful,
as she steps across the threshold
into a new, uncharted warmth.”
🕊️ A Gentle Prompt
The essence of life is choice—not challenge.
While challenges present us with options, it's the choice of the option we follow that creates the real shifts in our lives.
In retrospect, we learn the wisdom of our choices.
Prompt:
Write about a moment when you almost rushed forward—but held back.
What did you learn from staying a little longer in that moment?
📚 Rooted Reading
🔥 “Red Angel” – from Tidbits of Fire
Sometimes, a threshold doesn’t feel like peace—it feels like fire.
This brief, haunting piece recalls a real moment of crisis: standing face to face with a forest fire and witnessing something more than flames.
In horror, I stood staring at a great red fire
filling the center of the room like a great red angel.
A roar filled my ears with revelations.
But you ask, "What is a red angel?"
A vision of the threshold between heaven and hell,
the banishment from earth of all nations.
—From Red Angel, Tidbits of Fire
This isn’t the quiet kind of enough. It’s the terrible kind.
Not all thresholds are invitations to rest.
Some are ruptures—unasked, uncontrolled.
🪞 Echoes from You
“I finally said, ‘I’m done… for now.’ And for the first time, I didn’t feel guilty. I felt free.”
—QuietVerse reader, J.S.
🪶 Story Seeds
- “Perhaps never again to roll a drop of ink...” – Lay Down
- “Bring one to the brink of tears…” – The Brink
- “To the book in your hands—a threshold.” – Page Turner
- “She begins to stitch warmth into the fabric of their words.” – Crossing the Threshold
🌸 Quiet Gift
You can still receive the free chapbook Wisdom of the Quiet Muse if you haven’t yet.
“I let silence hold the part of me
still learning to be soft.”
—Wisdom of the Quiet Muse
It’s a small collection meant for soft restarts and slow beginnings.
📥 Download here
🔮 The Whisper Ahead
In Issue #10 of From the Quiet Verse, June 6—
June will ask for more.
More brightness, more boldness, more bloom.
But for now, stay on this threshold.
There is sacredness in arriving,
even before you’ve finished the race.
Next time, we’ll step into how joy can expand without performing.
