It is not up to us to believe in God
but only not to grant our love to false gods
Simone Weil, 1909 – 1943, French philosopher, activist and spiritual writer, described by Camus as the “only great spirit of our times”
Tag: growth
Fluidity
The best way to conduct oneself may be observed in the behaviour of water
Tao Te Chng VIII, 20
A hunger for eternity
Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither a child, nor a servant of the hours. It is a third self, occasional in some of us, tyrant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity.
Mary Oliver, Upstream
Our agenda
My analyst once said to me, “You must make your fears your agenda.” When we do take on that agenda, for all the anxiety engendered, we feel better because we know we are living in ‘bonne foi’ [good faith] with ourselves. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the perception that some things are more important to us than what we fear
James Hollis, Swamplands of the Soul
Being open
Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
Izumi Shikibu c., 974 – 1034
The moon in Japanese poetry is always the moon; often it is also the image of awakening. This poem reminds that if a house is walled so tightly that it lets in no wind or rain, if a life is walled so tightly that it lets in no pain, grief, anger, or longing, it will also be closed to the entrance of what is most wanted.
Translation and commentary by Jane Hirshfield
Sunday Quote: Times and seasons
There are years that ask questions and years that answer
Zora Neale Hurston, 1891 – 1960 African American author and anthropologist
Mindfulbalance 