The Buddha talked of the eight great vicissitudes of life:
Pleasure and Pain, Gain and Loss, Praise and Blame, and Fame and Disrepute.
These changes happen to everyone.
One of great laws of the dharma that I find myself often rediscovering is “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.
Joseph Goldstein, One Dharma
The alternative to a breaking heart is a closed one, and that is a deeper kind of death.
In a murderous time
the heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go
through dark and deeper dark,
and not to turn.
Stanley Kunitz, American poet, The Testing-Tree
Each morning brings a hidden blessing;
a blessing which is unique to that day, and which cannot be kept or re-used.
If we do not use this miracle today, it will be lost.
Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light
You breathe in gratitude,
and you breathe it out, too.
Once you learn how to do that, then you can bear someone who is unbearable
Anne Lamott
We are here to change the world
with small acts of thoughtfulness done daily
rather than with one great breakthrough
Harold S. Kushner
In parts of Italy Easter Monday is called Il Giorno degli Angeli” — the Day of the Angels.
The word “angel” in Hebrew simply means “messenger.”
That definition implies anything awakening us to reality is an “angel.” Even if there are specific supernatural beings whose job is to flit between heaven and earth, they would be no less an expression of cosmic creativity than a butterfly. Such beings could teach us no more than the everyday miracles we sleepwalk past every day.
Every bird, every flower, every person who passes by us today embodies a deep and holy wisdom that might illumine our world, if we are listening.
We are never really alone. “Angels” are everywhere.
Jim Rigby, Presbyterian minister and writer
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