Michael Valliant
Writer; father; Episcopal Priest; soul adventurer; creative nonfiction; storytelling; mysticism; comics; poetry; skateboarding; trail running; fountain pens, notebooks, life
- Scenes from a snowy afternoon bring to mind a favorite Jim Harrison quote: “I'm hoping to be astonished tomorrow by I don’t know what.”
- Reposted by Michael Valliant"Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain." ― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
- Reposted by Michael ValliantSo much of rewriting is waking up your verbs, my God.
- Reposted by Michael ValliantNew cookie plates in sour apple & pink shadow. I can’t get enough of these glazes!🍏💖 #pottery
- Reposted by Michael ValliantMy December #CraftArticle is all about reflections, looking back at the end of a year or at the end of a long project and contemplating the achievement in that. What did we write? What did we learn? What did we gain? What did we overcome? prattlefogandgravelrap.substack.com/p/turning-ar...
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- Reposted by Michael ValliantLiminality In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between them, there are doors. William Blake
- “It is not our job to remain whole. We came to lose our leaves Like the trees, and be born again, Drawing up from the great roots.” —Robert Bly
- Reposted by Michael Vallianttoday is my birthday, and I couldn’t imagine a better way to celebrate than having a new poem out in Burial Magazine! infinite gratitude to Z. H. Gill for giving this one a beautiful home :) 🙏
- Reposted by Michael Valliantone hand opens in grief the other in gratitude pressing them together to pray — Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “One on Thanksgiving”
- Reposted by Michael Valliantegret extravaganza
- “Don’t you think it’s odd that we appreciate absurdity?” “I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life.”
- Reposted by Michael ValliantDenis Johnson's Train Dreams is a perfect novella biblioklept.org/2025/11/23/d...
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- Reposted by Michael ValliantAt the link, this week's oasis of small sanities in one place – how to love the world more, what it's like to meet an orca, how not to be a victim of success: mailchi.mp/themarginali...
- Reposted by Michael Valliantthe measurable distance between poems one maple leaf falls then another one Canada goose calls then another one snowflake drifts then another one memory arrives then another one lifetime then another and another #vss365 #measurable
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- “Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of the soul’s passage through the valley of this life, its adventure in time, in history.” —Stanley Kunitz in conversation with Bill Moyers
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- Reposted by Michael ValliantExcited to have a flash in the beautiful latest issue of The Maine Review.♥️ www.mainereview.com/the-wing/
- Reposted by Michael ValliantRuth Stone
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- “We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” —T. S. Eliot, from “Four Quartets”
- Reposted by Michael ValliantKeats, born 230 years ago today, on the measure of compassion www.themarginalian.org/2019/07/02/k...
- Reposted by Michael Valliantthe hallowed seam
- Reposted by Michael ValliantSharing . . .because her words are always a balm open.substack.com/pub/annelamo...
- “How surely gravity’s law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of even the smallest thing and pulls it toward the center of the world… This is what things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
- Reposted by Michael ValliantMany, many warm thanks to Court Harler at Flash the Court for publishing my prose poem "What It Takes, What It Gives." It's had a long journey to here, and I'm so grateful to see it published. The work that inspired the piece is Lee Krasner's Palingenesis. flashthecourt.com/2025/10/03/w...
- Reposted by Michael Valliantbe not afraid. focus instead on the bright day coming, when all will be returned to a way long before. the atomic love is all. it causes the wind to blow, the flowers to lean towards the sun. it is the sound of the waves whispering to the shore.
- Yesterday I was handed a perfect fall leaf, deep red and wonderfully shaped—shared because we love and appreciate these things and the moments and wonder they give us. Holding a gifted fall leaf up to the setting sun is its own prayer of thanks and wow.
- Reposted by Michael Valliant“I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.” ― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
- Reposted by Michael ValliantThe grace in letting go How a leaf loves the air as it falls
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- Reposted by Michael ValliantAnother in my series of libraries Stonyhurst College library, Clitheroe #SomethingBeautiful #LoveLibraries #EveryLibraryMatters #Libraries #Library #LibrarySky #libsky
- Reposted by Michael ValliantWhat a tender and nourishing piece from @mariapopova.bsky.social. My heart is breaking about so many things, and I also know we must find sustenance in the midst of it as a “a countercultural act of courage and resistance.”
- “When you forgive, you are free to move on in life, to grow, to no longer be a victim. When you forgive, you slip the yoke, and your future is unshackled from your past.” —Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu, “The Book of Forgiving”
- Reposted by Michael ValliantI talked with poet and writer Maggie Smith about finding possibility in between-states and the freedom of having your life implode. Illustration by Harriet Lee-Merrion. @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social @tricyclemag.bsky.social tricycle.org/article/on-n... #creativelife #authorinterview
- Reposted by Michael ValliantCourage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt 🌺
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- “Curiosity is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.” —Tom Robbins
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- Reposted by Michael ValliantWe all have to live with ourselves. . .eventually (if not immediately) that truth is meaningful.
- Reposted by Michael Valliant“For one to be free there must be at least two.” ― Zygmunt Bauman #Photography Martin Parr
- Reposted by Michael Valliant‘The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.’ ~ Carl G. Jung writingforwellbeing.co.uk
- Reposted by Michael Valliant"We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it." - Mary Oliver Artist: Alberta Tiburzi
- Reposted by Michael Valliantstart small. let the driver merge, let the cashier breathe, let the stranger’s silence mean something other than indifference. #poetry #poem #art #digitalart #mentalhealth #compassion
- Reposted by Michael ValliantMonday sights
- “When we listen with our mind, we understand more of life. When we listen with our heart, we feel more of life. When we listen with our entire being and spirit, we are transformed and joined with life itself.” —Mark Nepo, “Seven Thousand Ways to Listen”
- Reposted by Michael ValliantThe poets and the storytellers, holding the powerful history of Juneteenth.
- Reposted by Michael ValliantToday's the *official* pub day for Human/Animal: a bestiary in essays @wlupress.bsky.social I will lean into the joy—Celebrate with me! The brilliant @carolinehagood.bsky.social interviewed me: open.substack.com/pub/caroline... AND It was excerpted in @msmagazine.com! msmagazine.com/2025/04/21/w...
- I love it when the evening light comes through the window with an intensity and a tone that says, “beauty emergency” (to borrow Maggie Smith’s phrase)—stop everything and go outside and stare at the sunset.
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- Reposted by Michael ValliantMary Oliver with some wise words...
- Several times a day, on a good day, I stop and get lost in light, color, sound, a bird, a breeze, a thought, a feeling. Rumi wrote: “Mystics are experts in laziness. They rely on it, / because they continuously see God working all around them.”
- Reposted by Michael ValliantTo love another is something like prayer and can't be planned; you just fall into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief. ~ Anne Sexton
- Reposted by Michael ValliantTwo weeks to thrillerfest!
- Reposted by Michael ValliantBeautiful book, incredible piece here, so worth a read and a listen
- Saturday morning breeze and sunshine. Spurred on this week by a verse from Rumi: “But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth, without complicated explanation, so everyone will understand the passage, ‘We have opened you.’”
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- Reposted by Michael ValliantGood night, friends. ⭐️ Happy weekend. Stay safe.
- Reposted by Michael ValliantSome recent beautiful conversations about the Earth and creativity remind me to share a joyful experience of land art piece I made called Altars of Belonging. I was able to weave & honor interbeing in moss, strawflowers, bark, & nests. As well as a beloved poem by Joy Harjo, “Remember”.
- Reposted by Michael ValliantGuiding light
