On taking a risk and being fully alive

You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing.

But listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to me.

There is life without love. It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days unburied.

When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks — when you hear that unmistakable pounding — when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming—then row, row for your life toward it.

Mary Oliver Prose Poem

Moving towards

Inner division wears away the personality
and this division can be overcome
only by making a choice,
by selecting a definite object for one’s love.

Nicholas Berdyaev,  Russian philosopher

Change

On the day you cease to change,
you cease to live.

Anthony de Mello

Encouragement

One of the most beautiful gifts in the world
is the gift of encouragement.

When someone encourages you,
that person helps you over a threshold
you might otherwise never have crossed on your own

John O Donoghue, Eternal Echoes

A Daring Adventure

Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.  Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.

Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change
and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.

Helen Keller

New buds

I was parking the car the other day as I returned from a meeting and my flu was beginning to kick in. I was preoccupied with it and its effects. As I got out of the car I noticed the snow had gone from the rockery. And there they were, peeking up through the soil, the first signs of snowdrops and crocus planted to greet the Spring. I noticed also the willow beginning to bud. And seeing these little unexpected gifts my heart was warmed, I felt joy, and realized how life and love can break though our most selfish considerations and the times we would like to close our hearts.

At times nature gives us teachings which we can need in our daily lives. Open up to new life and hope for the future. A lot is going on that we do not know about. Trust growth to take its own path in its own mysterious way.

I like to garden and have a plan for its development over the next years. However sometimes nature has its own plans. This winter a mole has come to take up residence in the field next door and from time to time he decides to visit the garden, messing up my neat lawn with his untidy hills. It ruins the order but surely is as much a part of nature as the formal beds I have put down. Who I am to say that my plans are best? Every week we get examples of how the natural world doesn’t behave in a predictable way, so we shouldn’t be surprised that natural upheavals occur in both our gardens and in our private lives. Maybe the small wild flowers that grow along the fence have as much right to be part of the garden as the ordered planting in beds? We often think we know what is best and in doing so often do not recognize what is. Sometimes, out of fear, we prefer to impose our order on things when in fact nature, and life, proceeds with its own mysterious lack of order. In doing so we risk losing the small and beautiful gifts which give joy to the heart. There is so much in life that is unexpected and unplanned for, but often these are the things that make all the difference.

The splendour of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.

Theresa of Lisieux