Zen is not some fancy, special art of living.
Our teaching is just to live,
always in reality, in its exact sense.
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi
Reality, as it is
Tag: balance
Ordinary
We need to remember that in sharp contrast to … self-seeking exceptionality, God works through the ordinary. Meister Eckhart gives us a word here: “If you are doing anything special, you’re not seeking God.”
Maggie Ross, Anglican hermit and theologian
Sunday Quote: Two sides
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
mundane miracles
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
Free medicine
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
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
