Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.
Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.
Mary Oliver, I Ask Percy How I should live my Life
photo of dog hurrying to the beach by andrew thomas
In novels – as in life – there is no perfection. We do the best we can with the tools we have at our disposal. Given that we are changing, the tools are changing, the thing itself is changing — there must be a moment when we stop. When we say, This is the best I can do for now… There is nobility in the effort, courage in the dailiness — the doggedness. It is a process of trying and failing. Of beginning again.
Dani Shapiro, Devotion
photo filiberto strazzari
You must give up the life you planned
in order to have the life that is waiting for you
Joseph Campbell
The “10,000 is things”expression for all that happens in a life, or in the world of our experience. They arise and pass away, continually rearranging themselves, and we have to learn how to work with this reality:
The ten thousand things arise together;
In their arising is their return.
Now they flower, and flowering sink homeward, returning to the root.
The return to the root is peace.
Peace: to accept what must be
and to know what endures.
In that knowledge is wisdom
Lao Tzu
You don’t have to do anything to acquire happiness. The great Meister Eckhart said very beautifully, “God is not attained by a process of addition to anything in the soul, but by a process of subtraction.” You don’t do anything to be free, you drop something. Then you’re free.
Anthony de Mello, sj.
photo paul nelhams
The butterfly counts not months but moments,
and has time enough.
Rabindranath Tagore
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