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
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
Holiness is reached not through effort or will, but by stopping; by an inward coming to rest; a place from which we can embody the mid winter spirit of our days, a radical, inhabited simplicity, where we live in a kind of ongoing surprise and with some wonder and appreciation, flawed and far from perfection, but inhabiting the still center of a beautiful, peripheral giftedness.
David Whyte, Finding the Holy in the Holidays
Since many places of worship have been closed these times, and we are removed from many of our usual supports, we have developed sanctuaries and refuges inside ourselves
Once upon a time some disciples begged their old and ailing master not to die. “But if I do not go, how will you ever see?” the Master said to them. “What is it we can possibly see when you are gone?” one of them asked. With a twinkle in his eye, the Master answered, “All I ever did in my entire life was to sit on the river bank handing out river water. After I’m gone, I trust that you will notice the river.”
Found in Joan Chittister, in Thomas Merton: Seeder of Radical Action and the Enlightened Heart
When the uncertainty of the current situation leads us to feel uprooted and we find our minds pulled in all directions by the latest news:
Settle the self on the self
and let your life force blossom
Blanche Hartman, Seeds for a Boundless Life: Zen Teachings from the Heart
Most people view themselves as waves and forget that they are also water. They are used to living in the realm of birth and death, and they forget about the realm of no birth and no death. Just as a wave lives the life of water, so, too, do we live the life of no birth and no death
Thich Nhat Hanh
Mindfulbalance 