One must bear in mind that there is a considerable difference between perfection and completeness….
The individual may strive after perfection,
but must suffer from the opposite of his [or her] intentions for the sake of ….. completeness.
Jung
Hold what is asked
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
Everything, everywhere
The gate of heaven is everywhere.
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
The whispered secret
An angel … embraced me
and whispered through my whole body:
“Don’t be ashamed of being human, be proud!
Inside you vault opens behind vault endlessly.
You will never be complete, that’s how it’s meant to be.”
Tomas Tranströmer, Romanesque Arches
Sunday quote: Transcendence
The start of the Advent season…
A person is not a thing or a process,
but an opening through which the absolute manifests.
Martin Heidegger
Nature says, let it go
In the Western Christian tradition, today is the last day of the year.
It’s a gift, this cloudless November morning
warm enough for you to walk without a jacket
along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing
of your feet through fallen leaves should be
enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you
when you catch yourself telling off your boss
for a decade of accumulated injustices,
all the things you’ve never said circling inside you.
warm enough for you to walk without a jacket
along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing
of your feet through fallen leaves should be
enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you
when you catch yourself telling off your boss
for a decade of accumulated injustices,
all the things you’ve never said circling inside you.
It’s the rising wind that pulls you out of it,
and you look up to see a cloud of leaves
swirling in sunlight, flickering against the blue
and rising above the treetops, as if the whole day
were sighing, Let it go, let it go,
for this moment at least, let it all go.
and you look up to see a cloud of leaves
swirling in sunlight, flickering against the blue
and rising above the treetops, as if the whole day
were sighing, Let it go, let it go,
for this moment at least, let it all go.
Jeffrey Harrison, Enough
Mindfulbalance 