Month: September 2022

My strength is trust

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A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life.  The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and smallest scar on my bark. I was born to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers.  I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me.  I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else.  I trust that God is in me.  I trust that my labour is holy. Out of this trust I live

Hermann Hesse, Trees: Reflections and Poems

Whatever

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After an old Hasidic master died, his followers sat around, talking about his life.

One person wondered aloud, “What was the most important thing in the world for the master?” They all thought about it. Another responded, after a time, “Whatever he happened to be doing at the time.“

Susan Murphy

Hold firm

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Whatever disquiet we sense in a room
we have brought there.

And so I instruct my ribs each morning,
pointing to hinge and plaster and wood –

You are matter, as they are.
See how perfectly it can be done.

Hold, one day more, what is asked.

Jane Hirshfield, A Room [extract]

Love and fear

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Happiness, anxiety, joy, resentment — we have many words for the many emotions we experience in our lifetimes. But deep down, there are only two emotions: love and fear. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace, and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety and guilt.

We have to make a decision to be in one place or the other. If you don’t actively choose love, you will find yourself in a place of either fear or one of its component feelings. Every moment offers the choice to choose one or the other. And we must continually make these choices, especially in difficult circumstances when our commitment to love, instead of fear, is challenged.

Elizabeth Kubler Ross

Two extremes

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There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss.

You will never succeed in filling that hole, because your needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it so that gradually the abyss closes. Since the hole is so enormous and your anguish so deep, you will always be tempted to flee from it.

There are two extremes to avoid: being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so many things that you stay far away from the wound you want to heal.


Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love

Refuse nothing

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Bring back your light towards the inside.
Enlighten the surroundings.
Open your hands and refuse nothing.

Fuyo Dokai, 1043-1118, Zen Buddhist monk