Those things of real worth in life are worth going to any length in love and respect to safeguard.
Julia Butterfly Hill,
Envioronmentalist Activist
Tag: gratitude
Seeing the bigger picture
The more things go “our way” for a while, the more we can believe that that is the way it is supposed to be.
And when things don’t go “our way,” which sooner or later they will not, we can get angry, disappointed, depressed, devastated……… forgetting that it was never “supposed to be” any one way at all.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Arriving at your own Door
Nomad
Heard this song for the first time this evening. Its beautiful haunting melody and sparse words speak to those times in our lives when we struggle and are sad, or when our heart feels raw. Often when that happens we contract and turn away, to protect ourselves. It is at times like that that we need friends who will not hide their face, to ground us and help us feel that we have a place.
The other day I looked
At myself in the mirror
Do not hide your face
Do not hide your face
From me when I feel sad
On the day when I call you
Answer me, please answer me
And turn your shy ear towards me
No cows and no grass to graze on
Makes me feel I’m a nomad
I’m lost and silent in the wilderness
Like an owl among the ruins
My wings lined with ashes
alone on the roof
I feel I’m a nomad
I feel I’m a nomad
I feel I’m a nomad
My days go up in smoke
My bones are aching
My days go up in smoke
My heart is breaking
Geoffrey Oryema Nomad
The basic instruction
Buddhist nun Pema Chodron’s instruction on how to develop our hearts, how to work with the fears that arise when we touch our natural warmth and love.
Each of us has a “soft spot”: the place in our experience where we feel vulnerable and tender. This soft spot is inherent in appreciation and love, and it is equally inherent in pain.
Often, when we feel that soft spot, it’s quickly followed by a feeling of fear and an involuntary, habitual tendency to close down. This is the tendency of all living things: to avoid pain and cling to pleasure. In practice, however, covering up the soft spot means shutting down against out life experience. Then we tend to narrow down into a solid feeling of self against other.
The trick is to stay with the soft spot and not harden over it. That’s the basic instruction: stay with the soft spot.
How does this work? You’re going along, and your mind and heart are open. Then someone says something and you find yourself either frightened or starting to get angry. You feel the hair rising on the back of your neck, and something in you closes down. You’re on your way to becoming all worked up. At this point, you become unreasonable, and all your wisdom goes out the window. You’re hooked. This is what we work with as practitioners, we have to be able to see where we get hooked like this. It’s easy to see. To interrupt the flow of it, though, is another matter.
Pema Chödrön, Stay with the Soft Spot of Bodhichitta.
Afraid to be ourselves
All of us have a secret desire to be seen as heroes, saints, martyrs.
We are afraid to be children, to be ourselves.
Jean Vanier, Community and Growth
Sunday Quote: The little things matter
In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter,
for in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Kahlil Gibran
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