Tighter restrictions imposed again after the brief respite of Christmas. Noticing small moments of beauty nourish the spirit
Friend, we’re travelling together.
Throw off your tiredness.
Let me show you one tiny spot of the beauty that cannot be spoken.
Rumi
Experiencing,
rather than trying to have special experiences,
is where real freedom lies
Ezra Bayda, At Home in the Muddy Water
You do not convince people with arguments, strategies or tactics.
You convince them by learning how to welcome them.
For that, it is necessary to keep doors open, above all the doors to the heart.
Pope Francis
God comes to you disguised as your life.
Paula D’Arcy, American Writer, retreat leader and seminar speaker
Nature teaches us that the moment when darkness is greatest is also the moment that light is about to return.
[In Iran] On the winter solstice families gather for a feast and surround themselves with candles, eat pomegranates and nuts, and recite poetry. “It is a beautiful way of assuring you that you have lived through long nights before. It is precisely at the point that the night is longest and darkest that you’ve actually turned a corner.”
Medieval Persian writings suggested that if one could not afford a feast, it is enough to bring a flower, “Look for the smallest bit of beauty around you. That very much resonates today, at a time where it seems like the mega-systems are all broken or falling apart, to return your gaze to the small.”
Omid Safi, professor of Iranian studies at Duke University, describing the 2,500 year old Iranian winter tradition of Yalda in the New York Times
Some words for these, the darkest days of the year: Silence, praise and inner life.
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come out of the silence,
like prayers prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb the silence
from which it came.
Wendell Berry, How to Be a Poet
