Even brief, five minute, encounters – if we have eyes to see – can contain a lifetime, and make a day special
Unexpected wonders happen,
not on schedule, or when you expect or want them to happen,
but if you keep hanging around, they do happen.
Wendell Berry
Sanctuary is wherever I find safe space to regain my bearings, reclaim my soul, heal my wounds, and return to the world as a wounded healer. It’s not merely about finding shelter from the storm: it’s about spiritual survival. Today, seeking sanctuary is no more optional for me than church attendance was as a child.
Sometimes I find it in churches, monasteries, and other sites designated as sacred.
But more often I find it in places sacred to my soul: in the natural world, in the company of a trustworthy friend, in solitary or shared silence, in the ambience of a good poem or good music.
Parker Palmer, Seeking Sanctuary in our own Sacred Places
The heart is quiet rather than noisy, intuitive rather than deductive,
lives entirely in the present moment and is at every moment accepting of reality as it is.
Moreover, the heart does not seek to distance itself from, or dominate anything or anyone by labeling. It accepts rather than rejects, finding similarity rather than alienation and likeness rather than difference.
Your heart knows no fear, it experiences no desire, and never finds the need to defend or justify itself. It is patient and undemanding. It nourishes our bodies in every moment.
Little wonder then, that the mind – always impatient and very demanding – manages to dominant the heart so thoroughly.
Archimandrite Meletios Webber
photo rosino
Sometimes you do your best but you are met with mistrust, or things don’t quite work out as planned:
Somebody says something to you that is designed to hurt. Instead of going into unconscious reaction and negativity, such as attack, defense, or personal withdrawal, you let it pass right through you. Offer no resistance. It is as if there is nobody there to get hurt anymore. That is forgiveness. In this way, you become invulnerable. You can still tell that person that his or her behavior is unacceptable, if that is what you choose to do. But that person no longer has the power to control your inner state. You are then in your power — not in someone else’s, nor are you run by your mind. Whether it is a car alarm, a rude person, a flood, an earthquake, or the loss of all your possessions, the mechanism is the same.
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now.
In order to change our mode of action,
we must change the image of ourselves that we carry within us.
Moshe Feldenkreis
See how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
Jane Hirshfield, For What Binds Us
photo Kanchelskis
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