The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.
The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Untroubled
Tag: Be fully present
Meet it and live it
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.…The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Sunday Quote: Miracle
To treat life as less than a miracle is to give up on it.
Wendell Berry, Life Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition
Worry
I worried a lot.
Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
Mary Oliver, I Worried
What troubles us
If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry.
Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
Paolo Coelho, The Alchemist
Wait
“Wait on the Lord” is a constant refrain in the Psalms, and it is a necessary word, for God often keeps us waiting. He is not in such a hurry as we are, and it is not his way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time. When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait ….. When action is needed, light will come.
J.I. Parker, 1926 – 2020 Canadian evangelical theologian, cleric and writer
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