We all are bruised reeds, whether our bruises are visible or not. The compassionate life is the life in which we believe that strength is hidden in weakness and that true community is a fellowship of the weak
Henri Nouwen
Category: Spirituality
Oh no, rain….
It’s like lying in bed before dawn and hearing rain on the roof……..
This simple sound can be disappointing because we were planning a picnic. It can be pleasing because our garden is so dry. But the flexible mind doesn’t draw conclusions of good or bad. It perceives the sound without adding anything extra, without judgments of happy or sad.
Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty
Really listening
“How shall I experience my oneness with creation?”
“By listening,” said the Master.
“And how am I to listen?”
“Become an ear that gives heed to every single thing the universe is saying. The moment you hear something you yourself are saying, stop.”
Anthony de Mello
Being fully present
Today’s liturgy read from the gospel of Saint Luke, the story of Martha and Mary. It is a 
well known tale. Jesus arrives in the house of his friends after a long journey. Martha is bothered, gets stressed and loses her calm as she prepares something for him to eat. She complains that Mary is not helping but Jesus states that Mary has chosen the better part – the better way of being – by simply sitting with him and listening. It is frequently used to argue for the superiority of reflection over action; I think it is better understood as a priority in the cultivation of aspects of ourseves, both of which are necessary.
However, it also points to another teaching, namely one on being present. One of the greatest gifts we can all experience – and it seemed to have been true for Jesus also – is knowing that another person is fully tuned into us. Sometimes we have to learn the art of being still so as to better support another person. In this story, the greatest gift that Mary could offer was not to be useful, but to be present. When we are lucky enough to have that connection with someone who is there for us, who really listens – who instinctively senses deep down how we are – then we are truly blessed.
Most people think of love as a feeling, but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present.
David Richo
True connection
Out beyond ideas
of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, – even the phrase “each other” –
do not make any sense.
Rumi
Truly present
The deep meaning of many rules of conduct and more principles of the past — so many 
of which have been abandoned without our understanding their real roots in human nature — involved the cultivation and development of the uniquely human power of attention, its action in the body, heart and mind of man. To be present, truly present, is to have conscious attention. This capacity is the key to what it means to be human.
It is not, therefore, the rapidity of change as such that is the source of our problem of time. It is the metaphysical fact that the being of man is diminishing.
Mindfulbalance 