Month: May 2020

Darkness and light

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We blink a thousand times a day. A thousand times a day the world goes dark. A thousand times a day we wake. We can’t escape this opening and closing. Even as you read this, your eyes, along with your heart and mind, are blinking –  opening and closing repeatedly, no matter what you do. It is part of being human.

Yet so much depends on which you see as home – being open or closed. Do you see life as one stream of light interspersed with nights of dark, or as one stream of darkness interspersed with days of light? Though there will never be an answer, what we believe about the nature of life matters. It lifts or burdens our days. So ask yourself, more than once, Is life one long miracle of feeling interspersed with moments of breaking? Do we repeatedly fall into our humanness from never-ending light? Or is life one long painful breaking interspersed with moments of wonder? Do we struggle up from the unending dark briefly into glimpses of light?

Mark Nepo, The Book Of Awakening

Swimming through

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The world of suffering changes into a place that brings forth goodness when we can consciously relate to it, rather than identify with the circumstances we are thrown into. 

We don’t have to drink the water we’re swimming through.

Ajahn Sucitto, Turning the Wheel of Truth

Threshold

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There are thresholds which thought alone, left to itself, can never permit us to cross.

An experience is required – an experience of poverty, of sickness.

Gabriel Marcel,  quoted in Gelin, Les Pauvres de Yahvé

 

Pruning

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The other morning a friend shared that when he was a little boy, he loved to watch his grandfather prune trees, and his memory of it has become a helpful metaphor during the COVID-19 crisis.

He explained that after the pruning, once the trees were down to their bare essence, they entered a period of botanical seclusion and apparent dormancy. But in time, the trees stood tall again – more lush and beautiful in the morning light.

We are in a time of tremendous pruning and seclusion, said my friend.

Let’s hope and trust that when this period ends, we, too, will emerge from our global seclusion more vibrant and beautiful than before.

Kelly Barron, Finding Opportunities for Insight and Growth During Isolation

Sunday Quote: Protection

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The word blessing evokes a sense of warmth and protection; it suggests that no life is alone or unreachable.

Each life is clothed in raiment of spirit that secretly links it to everything else.

Though suffering and chaos befall us, they can never quench that inner light of providence.

John O’Donohue

Sparks

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One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both, are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Letter to a Young Activist During Troubled Times: Do not Lose Heart, We were made for these Times