What Guides us

It’s a funny thing… but people mostly have it backward.

They think they live by what they want.

But really, what guides them is what they’re afraid of.

What they don’t want.

Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed

Align with the flow of life

Do non-doing;

Strive for the effortless.
Find flavor in that which has no flavor.
Deal with the small as if it were the great, deal with the few as if it were the many,

Respond to resentment with virtue.
Plan for the difficult while it is still easy;
work on the great while it is still small.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 63

Sunday Quote: Not a dress rehearsal

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

William Stafford, You Reading This, Be Ready

for E and B, wandering through Italy at this moment

Take each moment as it comes

Drinking tea, eating rice,
I pass my time as it comes;

Looking down at the stream, 
Looking up at the mountains,
How serene and relaxed I feel indeed!

Ch’an master Nan-ch’üan P’u-yüan, c. 749 – c. 835

Sunday Quote: Running after nonsense

It is not up to us to believe in God

but only not to grant our love to false gods

Simone Weil, 1909 – 1943, French philosopher, activist and spiritual writer, described by Camus as the “only great spirit of our times”

Not trying to fix

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