The secret of life is to let every segment of it produce its own yield at its own pace. Every period has something new to teach us: The harvest of youth is achievement; the harvest of middle age is perspective; the harvest of age is wisdom; the harvest of life is serenity.
Joan Chittister, In a High Spiritual Season
Today is the birthday of the 13th Century Persian Poet Rumi. So here is one of my favourite short quotations, which in its few lines contains as much as we need to know.
Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distances.
That’s not for human beings. Move within,
But don’t move the way fear makes you move.
People are in every way prevented from getting inside themselves.
Our greatest problem is a fear of depth
Thomas Merton
photo anjali.verma999
Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress.
Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it.
Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone.
Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water.
If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does
Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad
The task is to shift the identity more toward the movable conversation that stands behind us, a deep undercurrent we can tap into that carries on unconcerned with the surface tribulations. In this depth we try to create a real silence in which to keep our long-standing, well-established, self-protective stories away, to let ourselves alone so we can experience the physical vulnerability of the question and be transformed by it. We give these smaller protective stories away so that we can see how they come back to us once we have established a larger way of being in the world.
David Whyte, The Three Marriages
A lovely misty morning here in Kildare, and the leaves are clearly starting to fall. Autumn is the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” as Keats said in his beautiful description. The seeds fall underground and move into a period of silent growth. We can learn from them how to trust and wait, in times which are dark or when nothing seems to be happening.
I gratefully acknowledge how darkness has become less of an enemy for me and more of a place of silent nurturance, where the slow, steady gestation needed for my soul’s growth can occur. Not only is light a welcomed part of my life, but I am also developing a greater understanding of how much I need to befriend my inner darkness.
Joyce Rupp, Little Pieces of Light
photo phil champion
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