Too small a story

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People often discover at the time of their death that they’re much more than the small, separate self they’ve taken themselves to be. What’s amazing to me is that we take all that we are and shrink it down to such a small story. And then live into that story as if it were true. At the end of their life, people realize they were living in too small a story.

We have this term that we use “later”. Its very comfortable, this term “later”. It’s always gonna be later: “I’ll get to that later” or “Death will come later”. I think it gives us a comfortable distance from this experience that’s rather mysterious to us. Death is not just happening to us at the end of a long road. Its always with us. It’s in the marrow of every passing moment. I call it “the secret teacher that’s hiding in plain sight” that helps us to discover really what matters.

Frank Ostaseski, What the living can learn from the dying

White and black

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The start of November has traditionally been a time to reflect on themes of letting go and impermanence and for remembering those who have passed on on before us.

In life, nothing dwells. The wind blows and then stops. The blossoms burst forth and then fall.  Things come and go. The melody drifts back onto  an aching E flat and then back to E again. The song of your life is played on white and black keys. Sadness is … an essential truth of human life. But let’s not dwell there. Not while the song is still playing.

Karen Maizen Miller, Be Sad

A larger brightness

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On the Feast of All Saints

Strangely, all of life’s problems, dilemmas, and difficulties are not resolved not by negativity, attack, criticism, force, or logical resolution, but always by falling into a larger “brightness” – by falling into the good, the true, and the beautiful – by falling into God.

Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

Sunday Quote: Wholehearted

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The eve of the feast of Samhain, marking the end of the harvest season. It was the most important of the four Celtic Festivals, the start of winter and the darker part of the year. Bonfires were lit as a reminder of the victory of light over the increasing dark days.

When you do something,

you should burn yourself completely,

like a good bonfire,

leaving no trace of yourself.

Shunryu Suzuki

Try to remember

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This

I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

Mary Oliver, Fall Song

In this time of change

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In a time of drastic change one can be too preoccupied with what is ending or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning. In either case one loses touch with the present and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities. You do not need to know what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

In such an event, courage is the authentic form taken by love.

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander