Contradictions have always existed. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison.
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude.
Greek figure, c. 510 BC
The quality of our lives depends heavily on whether we assume a world of scarcity or a world of abundance.
By embracing the scarcity assumption, we create the very scarcities we fear. We create scarcity by competing with others for resources as if we were stranded on the Sahara at the last oasis. In the human world, abundance does not happen automatically It is created when we have the sense to choose community, to come together to celebrate and share our common story. Whether the “scarce resource” is money or love or power or words, the true law of life is that we generate more of whatever seems scarce by trusting its supply and passing it around. Authentic abundance does not lie in secured stockpiles of food or cash or influence or affection, but in belonging to a community where we can give those goods to others who need them – and receive them from others when we are in need.
Parker Palmer, The Active Life and Let Your Life Speak
photo john liu
Joy in the context of spirituality
is not the same as happiness.
Happiness is a feeling that, like all feelings, comes and goes,
while joy is a more fundamental attitude toward life.
This joy doesn’t change your circumstance; it embraces it.
Joy doesn’t make your situation other than it is;
but reveals the greater reality in which it is.
Being aware of the greater reality
always manifests as joy.
The more narrow the attention,
the more focused we are on fleeting moments
of happiness and sadness.
The wider our attention becomes
the more aware we are
of an unending flow of joy.
Rabbi Rami Shapiro
photo martin cathrae
I cannot tell if what the world considers ‘happiness’
is happiness or not.
All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it,
I see them carried away headlong, serious and obsessed,
in a general rush, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction.
And all the while they claim to be
just on the point of attaining happiness….
Chuang-Tzu.
photo emery way
Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!”
and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
Mary Oliver
photo s04av
My eyes already touch the sunny hill
going far ahead of the road I have begun
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp
It has its inner light even from a distance
and changes us even if we do not reach it
into something else, which hardly sensing it, we already are.
Rainer Maria Rilke
photo: oregon department of transportation
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