There’s a necessary dying…Be ground.
Be crumbled so wildflowers will come up where you are.
You’ve been stony too many years. Try something different.
Surrender.
Rumi
Necessary dying
The Significance of night
The winter solstice. The shortest, darkest, day can still be full of things to look forward to:
...this is the slowed down season, held fast by darkness
and if no one comes to keep you company
then keep watch over your own solitude.
In that stillness, you will learn
with your whole body
the significance of cold
and the night,
which is otherwise always eluding you.
Patricia Fargnoli, Winter Grace
photo slava
The light is always there
The shortest days of the year. Our ancestors feared that the sun has lost the battle and that darkness could win the day. However, moments of light and darkness alternate in every life. No matter how dark a place we find ourselves in from time to time, or how deeply we feel buried, if we come to see that all circumstances change and pass away, we get in touch with a deeper, more natural wisdom. Each moment is complete, even if it is not perfect. We can hold moments of darkness without completly identifying with them.
Deep in their roots,
all flowers keep the light.
Theodore Roethke, American Poet
photo Ian Capper
Sunday Quote: Like the seasons
In the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.
Pema Chodron
photo glendalough by MJakubik11
Winter and Spring
Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence
Waiting
In the Islamic tradition, during Ramadam, there is a special night called the Night of Power, when angels are said to descend to earth, bringing peace. It is not known which night it is exactly, so the only attitude to have is one of waiting and watching. This is true for Advent also, but it even applies not just to special seasons but to the mystery in every moment:
God,
just like the Night of Power,
is hidden amidst the other nights
So that the soul
will go on seeking every night.
Oh young one,
not every night is the Night of Power
And yet,
not every night
is bereft of the Night of Power
Rumi
photo CC-BY
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