The beauty even in the most ordinary.
Wonder even in the most commonplace:
Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it
and whispers, “Grow, grow”.
The Talmud
Tag: heart
Sunday Quote: Be still and move forward
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion.
T.S. Eliot, East Coker
Developing self-compassion
Be gentle with yourself. Be kind to yourself.
You may not be perfect, but you are all you’ve got to work with.
The process of becoming who you will be begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.
Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English
Accepting, not problem-solving
This reflex to solve, rescue and fix, removes us from the tenderness at hand. For often, intimacy arises not from any attempt to take the pain away, but from living through together; not from a working out, but from a being with. Trust and closeness deepen from holding and being with, both emotionally and physically.
I’m learning, pain by pain and tension by tension, that after all my strategies, the strength of love lies in receiving and not negotiating; in accepting each other and not problem solving each other; in listening and affirming each other, not trying to change or fix those we love.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
Our ongoing relationship with fear
Fear is our first, and if we are not careful, our last love. It is our most enduring relationship. It never leaves our side. It tells us where to go, what to wear, what to say and what not to say. We surrender all other options to it. Before, after and during most of our relationships we are concerned above all not with the other party but with what we fear he or she will do…. We are unavailable for any truly loving and fulfilling relationship so long as we are in a committed relationship with the most controlling part of our own mind – our fear. Our fear of what will happen and our fear of what will not.
Nearly everything we are afraid will happen is going to happen anyway, so what’s to fear? There is no secure or underlying ground, so we make ourselves safe only when we see and accept the way life is. Utterly spontaneous and impermanent. When it is time to laugh, we laugh. When it is time to weep, we weep. We are cheated of nothing in life except that from which we withhold ourselves by ego’s narrow bounds. These bounds were meant to break; indeed they must, if we ever hope to be whole again
Karen Maezen Miller, Hand Wash Cold: Care instructions for an ordinary life.
Endings give rise to new beginnings
I know that when I struggle with the pain of any loss, the struggle preoccupies my mind and leaves no room for hope. However, when I recognize the pain I feel as the legitimate result of loss, I am respectful of its presence and kind to myself. My mind always relaxes when it is kind, and around the edges of the truth of whatever has ended, I see displays of what might be beginning.
Sylvia Boorstein
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