To listen to your soul is to stop fighting with life – to stop fighting when things fall apart; when they don’t go our way, when we get sick, when we are betrayed or mistreated or misunderstood. To listen to the soul is to slow down, to feel deeply, to see ourselves clearly, to surrender to discomfort and uncertainty and to wait.
Elizabeth Lesser.
All of us, from time to time, doubt our inner goodness and beauty. We have to rediscover it within or be reminded by others that it lies there:
Sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within
of self-blessing.
Galway Kinnell, St Francis and the Sow
photo NNU-12-22100555
In the dew of little things
the heart finds its morning
and is refreshed.
Kahlil Gibran
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability —
and that it may take a very long time.
Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit theologian and scientist, died this day 1955
photo nathalia morelatto
Useful practice these days in Ireland, with its mix of sunshine and heavy showers….
There is something to be learned from being out in the rain. When you get caught out by a sudden shower, your first instinct is not to get wet and you run quickly along the road. But in doing so you have to run under the eaves of the houses and you still get wet. However, when you are balanced from the beginning, you will not get annoyed, even though you will get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything in life.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo, 1659 – 1719, author Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai.
photo Frankie Fouganthin
Saying yes to everything in a day, including things we would prefer not to be happening, is not easy, but it helps us remember that life is made up of both pleasant and unpleasant:
Even now,
decades after,
I wash my face with cold water —
not for discipline,
nor memory,
nor the icy, awakening slap,
but to practice
choosing
to make the unwanted wanted.
Jane Hirshfield, A Cedary Fragance from Given Sugar, Given Salt
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