The way of mindfulness is, however, always appropriate to the time and the place, to the way things are in their good and bad aspects.
Then suffering isn’t dependent on the world being good or bad, but on how willing we are to use wisdom in this present moment.
The way out of suffering is now, in being able to see things as they are
Ajahn Sumedho, The Way it Is
He said not “Thou shalt not be troubled, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be distressed,” but he said, “Thou shalt not be overcome.”
It is God’s will that we take heed to these words, that we may be ever mighty in faithful trust in weal and woe.
Julian of Norwich
A poem for this Easter Monday, traditionally in Italy “Lunedì dell’Angelo”, (Monday of the Angel), a day for going for a walk, remembering the road to Emmaus story in the New Testament
Now you know the worst
we humans have to know
about ourselves, and I am sorry,
for I know that you will be afraid.
To those of our bodies given
without pity to be burned, I know
there is no answer
but loving one another,
even our enemies, and this is hard.
But remember:
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine
though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.
You do not have to walk in darkness.
If you will have the courage for love,
you may walk in light.
Wendell Berry, Now you Know the Worst
When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.
Tuli Kupferberg, 1923 – 2010, American counterculture poet and author.
The period between Good Friday and Easter Sunday shows us all the aspects of human life, from darkness to light:
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
Maya Angelou, A Brave and Startling Truth
If God’s incomprehensibility does not grip us in a word,
if it does not draw us into his superluminous darkness,
if it does not call us out of the little house of our homely, close-hugged truths ...
we have misunderstood the words of Christianity.
For they all speak of the unknown God who only reveals to give himself as the abiding mystery.
Karl Rahner sj., 1904 – 1984 Jesuit Theologian, Poetry and the Christian.
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