Indeed you have a majestic, sublime nature.
Qur’an, Surah Qalam, Aya 4.
These words were firstly directly to Mohammad, the Prophet, but in the tradition are also addressed to each person who reads them
Sunday Quote: Remember
Month: September 2022
Taste everything
O taste and see
the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything, all that lives
to the imagination’s tongue,
grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather,
to breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being hungry, and plucking
the fruit.
Denise Levertov, O Taste and See
Making our soul
The human adventure is a wandering through the vale of the world for the sake of making soul.
Our life is psychological, and the purpose of life is to make psyche of it, to find connections between life and soul
James Hillman
How much we are missing
Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness. Day and night, gifts keep pelting down on us. If we were aware of this, gratefulness would overwhelm us. But we go through life in a daze.
A power failure makes us aware of what a gift electricity is; a sprained ankle lets us appreciate walking as a gift, a sleepless night, sleep. How much we are missing in life by noticing gifts only when we are suddenly deprived of them.
Eyes see only light, ears hear only sound, but a listening heart perceives meaning. Everything is a gift.
Gratefulness is the key to a happy life, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy – because we will always want to have something else or something more.
David Steindl-Rast
You too are a tree
You too are a tree.
During a storm of emotions, you should not stay at the level of the head or the heart, which are like the top of the tree. You have to leave the heart, the eye of the storm, and come back to the trunk of the tree. Your trunk is one centimeter below your navel. Focus there, paying attention only to the movement of your abdomen, and continue to breathe.
Thich Nhat Hanh
An overcast day
Pay close attention to your mean thoughts.
That sourness may be a blessing,
as an overcast day brings rain for the roses
and relief to dry soil.
Don’t look so sourly on your sourness!
It may be it’s carrying what you most deeply need
and want.
What seems to be keeping you from joy
may be what leads you to joy.
Don’t call it a dead branch.
Call it the live, moist root.
Don’t always be waiting to see
what’s behind it.
Reach for it.
Hold your meanness to your chest
as a healing root,
and be through with waiting.
Rumi in Coleman Banks, Delicious Laughter: Rambunctious Teaching Stories from the Mathnawi
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