Decluttering

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In the Christian tradition the season of Lent begins today, a period of simplification and an opportunity to make space for the deeper realities in our lives, creating room to see what is happening, to go deeper and see where we are being called to invest our energy.

Most people today seems to think that sacrifice means giving something up. This is how shallow our religious sense has become. Sacrifice really involves the art of drawing energy from one level and reinvesting it at another level to produce a higher form of consciousness.

Robert Johnson, Jungian Analyst, Balancing Heaven and Earth

Rest

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The unmoved is the source of all movement.

If you let yourself be blown to and fro,
you lose touch with your root.
If you let restlessness move you,
you lose touch with who you are.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 26

Spots of time

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In the midst of the struggle to care for my soul, I read Wordsworth’s poem, ‘The Prelude,’ in which he writes about ‘spots of time’ that nourish and repair the soul. I believe he was referring to brief, concentrated moments- little epiphanies- that inflame us with a sense of the holy. I began to search for spots of time here and there in my day. I found them by stopping. Just stopping. Some of my favorite words that Jesus spoke are, “Come away by yourself to a lonely place and rest a while.” I began to “come away” to a nook somewhere in the house or the yard where I would spend five minutes or less sitting still and receding into the quiet core of myself. Caring for my soul turned out to be simply that – spots of time in which to be.  

Sue Monk Kidd, Firstlight: The Early Inspirational Writings

Sunday Quote: Deeper

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What’s magical, sometimes, has deeper roots
than reason.
I hope everyone knows that.

Mary Oliver, Such Silence 

A natural rhythm

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Allow your life to unfold naturally.

Just as you breathe in and breathe out,

there is a time for being ahead and a time for being behind;

a time for being in motion and a time for being at rest;

a time for being vigorous and a time for being exhausted;

a time for being safe and a time for being in danger

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 29

One day more

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Cold here this week and snow falls. Some beautiful words to help us in challenging conditions

Windowsills evenly welcome both heat and cold.

Radiators speak or fall silent as they must.

Doors are not equivocal,  floorboards do not hesitate or startle.

Impatience does not stir the curtains,

a bed is neither irritable nor rapacious.

Whatever disquiet we sense in a room

we have brought there.

And so I instruct my ribs each morning,

pointing to hinge and plaster and wood —

          You are matter, as they are.

          See how perfectly it can be done.

          Hold, one day more, what is asked.   

Jane Hirshfield,  A Room