I am a believer in pilgrimage in a mediaeval sense. It functions to ground us in some way. We have unsettled souls; we are human beings, bound for mortality, wondering about eternity. There is a consolation in doing something that is a ritual – there have been many before us, many will come after us and we are part of something greater than ourselves, if only for a moment.
Liam Ó Muirthile, 1950 – 2018, Irish-language poet
Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot.
The world is no better than its places. Its places at last
are no better than their people while their people
continue in them. When the people make
dark the light within them, the world darkens.
Wendell Berry
We come to realize that the universe mirrors back to us perfectly our beliefs, our intentions, our sincerity. What is is the product of the map of reality you carry inside you?
If you want to change your experience, you need to change the map.
Alberto Villoldo, One Spirit Medicine: Ancient Ways to Ultimate Wellness
We have often heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is usually taken to mean that the sense of beauty is utterly subjective; there is no accounting for taste because each person’s taste is different. The statement has another, more subtle meaning: if our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us. We will be surprised to discover beauty in unexpected places where the ungraceful eye would never linger. The graced eye can glimpse beauty anywhere, for beauty does not reserve itself for special elite moments or instances; it does not wait for perfection but is present already secretly in everything. When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary.
John O Donohue, Beauty: Rediscovering The True Sources of Compassion, Serenity, and Hope
The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid
than that which is said in any conversation.
We know better than we do
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You live,
not by securing yourself against impermanence,
but by finding yourself as impermanence
Michael Stone, Awake in the World
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