If the angel deigns to reappear
It is because you have persuaded him
not with tears but with your humble decision always to begin again
Rainer Maria Rilke
photo mark voorendt
Tag: heart
Trust
When we get our spiritual house in order, we’ll be dead. This goes on.
You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness.
Don’t expect faith to clear things up for you.
It is trust, not certainty.
Flannery O’Connor, American Author, 1925 – 1964, A Prayer Journal.
photo chi king
At the door
In practicing equanimity, we train in widening our circle of understanding and compassion to include the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. It is more a matter of being fully engaged with whatever comes to our door. We could call it being completely alive. Training in equanimity requires that we leave behind some baggage: the comfort of rejecting whole parts of our experience, for example and the security of welcoming only what is pleasant. The courage to continue with this unfolding process comes from self-compassion and from giving ourselves plenty of time. If we continue to practice this way over the months and years, we will feel our hearts and minds grow bigger. When people ask me how long this will take, I say, “At least until you die.”
Pema Chodron, The places that scare you
Arms open
In a world that lives like a fist
trust is no more than waking
with your hands open.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
photo angie garrett
Speech and silence
I’ve been thinking about something for a long time, and I keep noticing that most human speech – if not all human speech – is made with the outgoing breath. This is the strange thing about presence and absence. When we breath in, our bodies are filled with nutrients and nourishment. Our blood is filled with oxygen, our skin gets flush; our bones get harder – they get compacted. Our muscles get toned and we feel very present when we’re breathing in. The problem is, that when we’re breathing in, we can’t speak. So presence and silence have something to do with each other.
Li-Young Lee
photo epSos.de
Taking people for granted
Day and night, gifts keep pelting down on us.
If we were aware of this, gratefulness would overwhelm us. But we go through life in a daze.
A power failure makes us aware of what a gift electricity is; a sprained ankle lets us appreciate walking as a gift, a sleepless night, sleep.
How much we are missing in life
by noticing gifts only when we are suddenly deprived of them.
David Steindal-Rast
photo: forS
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