Today is the first Sunday of Advent, a season of waiting and patience
I live by the truth that “No” is a complete sentence.
I rest as a spiritual act.
Sunday Quote: Rest
Endings and beginnings
The last day of the year in the Christian Calendar. Advent starts this evening. A welcome time of renewal, hope and waiting
Poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes indeed.
Mary Oliver, Poetry Handbook
The wide streams go their way,
The pond lapses back into a glassy silence.
The cause of God in me — has it gone?
Do these bones live? Can I live with these bones?
Theodore Roethke, American poet 1908 – 1963, What Can I Tell My Bones? (extract)
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Be Still Sometimes
This is a poem for someone
who is juggling her life.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
It needs repeating
over and over
to catch her attention
over and over,
as someone who is juggling her life
finds it difficult to hear.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
Let it all fall sometimes.
Rose Cook, Poem for someone who is juggling her life
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A simple practice
When confusion or pain seems to tighten what is possible, when sadness or frustration shrinks your sense of well-being, when worry or fear agitates the peace right out of you, try lending your attention to the nearest thing. Try watching how the dust lifts and resettles when you blow on it.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
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Ease
Over and over again, people come to me, and they tell me, You just don’t know how strong I am. They say “strength” and I want to hear “balance.” The strength idea has effort in it; this is not what I’m looking for.
Strength that has effort in it is not what you need; you need the strength that is the result of ease.
Ida Rolf , 1896 – 1979, biochemist, creator of “Rolfing” manual therapy
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Feeling created
So I read….Armenians, I read, salt their newborn babies. I check somewhere else: so did the Jews at the time of the prophets. They washed a baby in water, salted him, and wrapped him in cloths. When God promised to Aaron and all the Levites all the offerings Israel made to God, the firstfruits and the firstling livestock, “all the best of the oil, and all the best of the wine,” he said of this promise, “It is a covenant of salt forever.” In the Roman church baptism, the priest places salt in the infant’s mouth.
I salt my breakfast eggs. All day long I feel created.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
