On the day of the Summer Solstice and the longest day of the year…
If we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are,
and where we come from,
we will have failed
Carl Sagan, 1934 – 1996 U.S. Astronomer and Cosmologist
A day for letting go of ideas
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Rumi
photo kevin higgins
Creating our reality
Two monks were arguing about the temple flag waving in the wind. One said, “The flag moves.” The other said, “The wind moves.” They argued back and forth but could not agree. Hui-neng, said: “Gentlemen! It is not the flag that moves. It is not the wind that moves. It is your mind that moves.” The two monks were struck with awe.
Chinese master Hui-neng (638-713), the Sixth Ch’an Patriarch is considered by some to be the true father of Zen.
photo matt brown
A wise not-understanding
Why not then continue to look upon it all as a child would, as were looking at something unfamiliar, out of the depths of your own world, from the vastness of your own solitude, which is itself work and status and vocation? Why should you want to give up a child’s wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are a participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from.
Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Being fully, honestly, here
Episcopal Priest Robert Farrer Capon warns “We spend a long time wishing we were elsewhere and otherwise“. We are like the character in the movie Postcards from the Edge who sends a card home from vacation, “Having a wonderful time. Wish I were here”
Frederic Brussat, Spiritual Literacy
photo coillte.ie
The intersection of two worlds
It is so easy to miss the tiny symbols. Finding them is quite different from the business of trying to hatch up big symbolic experiences. It is recognition, not pursuit, of meaning — recognition of the sacramental, of the intersection of the two worlds, breaking through unsought because one is attending.
Helen Luke, Jungian Therapist, Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On
photo tamorlan
Mindfulbalance 