If we go forward, we die; if we go backward, we die.
So let’s go forward and die.
African Proverb
Sunday Quote: Perseverance
Tag: Be fully present
Simple mindfulness advice
A walk is just as good…
When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having,
just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road,
without a thought on anything but on the ride you are taking.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Scientific American, 1896
[or as I saw it written on a wall in Italy…”pedala senza pensare a nient’altro che alla strada che percorri”]
Precious enough
Who needs to reach beyond all this wonder surrounding us….
Who needs to feel they will survive their death, either as a transcendent conscious soul residing in heaven or re-entering nature again and again?
What we are given is precious enough – a moment of awareness.
Andrew Olendzki, Unlimiting Mind: The Radically Experiential Psychology of Buddhism
Our highest ambition
All Saints Day in the Christian Calendar
Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am.
That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.
Thomas Merton, Journal, October 2, 1958
Sunday Quote: Darker days
Daylight saving time in Ireland and around Europe.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
David Whyte, Sweet Darkness
Trusting whatever arrives
There’s that long bend in the river on the way home. Fluffy bursts of milkweed are floating through shafts of sunlight or disappearing where trees reach out from their deep dark roots.
Maybe people have to go in and out of shadows till they learn that floating,
that immensity waiting to receive whatever arrives with trust.
Maybe somebody has to explore what happens when one of us wanders over near the edge and falls for awhile.
Maybe it was your turn.
William Stafford, Afterwards
