Sunday Quote: The source of our growth

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The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for.

The …thing in the cave, that was so dreaded, has become the center.

Joseph Campbell.

photo EMeczKa

The roots of compassion

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Easter Saturday.. a day of waiting

When I stop running from what frightens me,  and instead try to feel and understand it, I learn to deal with the world with greater kindness.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

Naomi  Shihab Nye, Kindness

photo AMISOM Public Information

Falling is part of life

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Everyone, from time to time, experiences  a challenge which makes life seem less safe, when things seem to tighten around them – a new job, relationship difficulties, facing an illness or being let down.  Under these pressures we may stumble and even fall:

If there be anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe,

I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me.

But this was shown:

that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.


Julian of Norwich 

photo of memorial for Captain Scott South Pole, by Barneygumble

The modern temptation: Letting work define us

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For Christians this evening begins three days of reflection, the most significant part of the yearly calendar.

Often people devote their primary attention to the facts of their lives, to their situation, to their work, to their status. Most of their energy goes into doing. Meister Echhart writes beautifully about this temptation. He says many people wonder where they should be and what they should do, when in fact they should be more concerned about how to be. The love side of your life is the place of greatest tenderness within you. In a culture preoccupied with fixities and definites and correspondingly impatient mystery, it is difficult to step out from the transparency of false light into the more candlelit world of the soul.

John O’Donohue

photo: echiner1

Learning to be open

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I sit before flowers
hoping they will train me in the art
of opening up

Shane Koyczan,  22 May 1976, Canadian poet and writer

photo katrina wiese

Sunday Quote: Quiet

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A quote for the beginning of the most important week in the Christian calendar:

The quieter you become

The more you can hear

Ram Dass

photo USFWS Mountain Prairie