I live by the truth that “No” is a complete sentence.
I rest as a spiritual act.
Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Slowing down
Tag: Be fully present
Cold
The first real cold spell of winter expected over the next few days. We prefer life to be all sunshine, but…
Without the bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone,
how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the world?
Dogen, 1200 – 1253, Buddhist monk, founder of the Soto school of Zen.
Neither drifting nor clinging
The art of living is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other,
It consists in being sensitive to each moment in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive
Alan Watts
letting go
Sometimes we try too hard, and then life has a way of revealing what we need
The early sun dissolves the mist
that has covered the mountain.
All night I have listened to the wise,
yet failed to learn.
Dimly, darkly, the eternal pines
rise without effort from the vanishing fog.
Xue Tao, c770–832, Chinese poet
Sunday Quote: Facts and Dreams
We must shape life so
that at some future hour,
facts and dreams meet.
Victor Hugo
Not beyond this moment
Our lives are not beyond this breath there on the chilly glass, but of that breath
and in this life the hands in our mittens are never really empty.
It is all around us, free, this wonderful life: clear jingle of tire chains, the laughter of ice that breaks under our boots. Each hour is a gift to those who take it up.
Ted Kooser, American Pulitzer Prize winning Poet, December
