Midweek pick-me-up: Toni Morrison on how to see your body as an instrument of joy, sanity, and self-love

NOTE: This newsletter might be cut short by your email program. [View it in full](.  If a friend forwarded it to you and you'd like your very own newsletter, [subscribe here]( — it's free.  Need to modify your subscription? You can [change your email address]( or [unsubscribe](. [The Marginalian]( [Welcome] Hello {NAME}! This is the midweek edition of [The Marginalian]( by Maria Popova — one piece resurfaced from the sixteen-year archive as timeless uplift for heart, mind, and spirit. If you missed last week's archival resurrection — do not despise your inner world: philosopher Martha Nussbaum's advice on life — you can catch up [right here]( if you missed the recap of the best of The Marginalian 2022 in a single place, that is [here](. And if my labor of love enriches your life in any way, please consider supporting it with a [donation]( — it remains free and ad-free and alive thanks to reader patronage. If you already donate: You are among the kindhearted 1% making this available to the free-riding 99%, and I appreciate you more than you know. [FROM THE ARCHIVE | Toni Morrison on the Body as an Instrument of Joy, Sanity, and Self-Love]( Thinking lately about what it means to have [the right heart]( which intimates the question of what it means to tend to one’s own heart rightly, I was reminded of a passage from what may be [the loveliest, truest, most quietly transcendent thing]( ever written about the art of growing older: “The main thing is this,” Grace Paley wrote in 1989, “when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.” I was reminded, too, of a kindred passage penned two years earlier by another titan of thought and feeling in language: Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931–August 5, 2019), writing in her 1987 masterpiece [Beloved]( ([public library]( — the novel that soon made her the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize, which she received with a [speech of staggering insight into the human heart](. Toni Morrison. Jacket photograph for her debut novel, 1970. From within the story’s broader meditation on [the deepest meaning of freedom]( and the body as the locus of liberation, Morrison unspools this splendid sentiment from the lips of her protagonist: In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. A century after Walt Whitman declaimed in [Leaves of Grass]( that “the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern and includes and is the soul,” composing his reverent catalogue of body-parts — “head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears… mouth, tongue, lips, teeth… strong shoulders… bowels sweet and clean… brain in its folds inside the skull-frame… heart-valves…” — Morrison writes: Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face… Love your mouth… This is flesh… Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms… Love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver — love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts… love your heart. For this is the prize. The Human Heart. One of French artist Paul Sougy’s [mid-century scientific diagrams of life](. (Available [as a print]( and [as a face mask]( [Beloved]( remains the rare sort of masterpiece that [gives the English language back to itself and your conscience back to itself](. Complement this particular fragment with Rilke on [the relationship between the body and the soul]( and the science of [how our minds and our bodies converge in the healing of trauma]( then revisit Morrison on [literature as rebellion and redemption]( [wisdom in the age of information]( [the artist’s task in trying times]( and the little-known, lovely [children’s book about kindness]( she wrote with her son. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving In 2022, I spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian ([formerly Brain Pickings]( going. For sixteen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor has made your own life more livable this year, please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now]( [Give Now]( Partial to Bitcoin? You can beam some bit-love my way: 197usDS6AsL9wDKxtGM6xaWjmR5ejgqem7 Need to cancel an existing donation? (It's okay — life changes course. I treasure your kindness and appreciate your support for as long as it lasted.) You can do so [on this page](. KINDRED READINGS: [I Feel, Therefore I Am: Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on Consciousness as a Full-Body Phenomenon]( * * * [Music and the Body: Richard Powers on the Power of Song]( * * * [The Science of Working Out the Body and the Soul: How the Art of Exercise Was Born, Lost, and Rediscovered]( * * * [The Source of Self-Regard: Toni Morrison on Wisdom in the Age of Information]( * * * A SMALL, DELIGHTFUL SIDE PROJECT: [Uncommon Presents from the Past: Gifts for the Science-Lover and Nature-Ecstatic in Your Life, Benefitting the Nature Conservancy]( [---]( You're receiving this email because you subscribed on TheMarginalian.org (formerly BrainPickings.org). This weekly newsletter comes out each Wednesday and offers a hand-picked piece worth revisiting from my 15-year archive. The Marginalian MAIL NOT DELIVERED 47 Bergen Street, 3rd FloorBrooklyn, NY 11201 [Add us to your address book]( [unsubscribe from this list](   [update subscription preferences](