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
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Manon, Ballerina
A season or an hour of the day is a visitation whose return is not always assured. Every spring following a long winter feels as miraculous as if we are seeing it for the first time. Out of the dead garden rises abundance beyond a winter eye’s comprehension…..To make friends with the hours is to come to know all the hidden correspondences inside our own bodies that match the richness and movement of life we see around us.
David Whyte, Time is a Season
Today is Candlemas, another ancient feast, this one dating from the 4th Century in the Christian tradition, reflecting a need to mark this moment – halfway between the winter and the spring solstices – by bringing light into the darkness.
Spirit, use me today, not in some miracle that
would make others marvel, and would make me proud.
Not in the word of wisdom, that would stay in the mind
and make me remembered.
Not in the heroic act, that would change the world for the better
and me for the worse.
But in the mundane miracles, of honesty and truth,
that keep the sky from falling.
In the unremembered quiet words, that keep a soul on the path.
And in the unnoticed acts, that keep the world moving
slowly closer to the light.
Grahame Davis, Prayer
The first day of Spring in the Celtic Calendar, the important feast of Imbolc, halfway between solstices, with themes of light and fertility, hidden seeds and new life.
Lord, the air smells good today, straight from the mysteries
within the inner courts of God.
A grace like new clothes thrown across the garden,
free medicine for everybody.
The trees in their prayer, the birds in praise.
Rumi
Peace isn’t an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth, it’s an experience that’s expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened.
Pema Chodron
Whenever we step away from emotional reactivity, a confining narrative or our filtering concepts, and relate directly to what is present in the here and now, we are taking the backward step.
Give up a practice based on intellectual understanding – searching for phrases and chasing after words.
Take the backward step and turn the light inward.
Your body-mind of itself will drop away, and your original face will appear. If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this.
Dogen, 1200 – 1253, Fukanzazengi
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