I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.
Wendell Berry, from Given
Tag: heart
Belonging and not belonging
Interestingly, we belong to life as much through our sense that it is all impossible, as we do through the sense that we will accomplish everything we have set out to do. This sense of belonging and not belonging is lived out by most people through three principal dynamics: first, through relationship to other people and other living things; second, through work; and third, through an understanding of what it means to be themselves, discrete individuals alive and seemingly separate from everyone and everything else.
David Whyte, The Three Marriages
Sunday quote: Eyes of wonder
Everything is ceremony
in the wild garden of childhood
Pablo Neruda
Comparing and complaining
The comparing mind frequently takes us away from the unique form of our own life …
One morning the teacher announced to his disciples that they would walk to the top of the mountain. The disciples were surprised because even those who had been with him for years thought the teacher was oblivious to the mountain which looked serenely down on their town.
By midday it became apparent that the teacher had lost direction. Moreover, no provision had been made for food. The disciples grumbled but he continued walking, sometimes through underbrush and sometimes across crumbling rock.
When they reached the summit in the late afternoon, they found other wanderers there ahead of them who had strolled up a well-worn path.
The disciples complained to the teacher. He only said, “Those others have climbed a different mountain.”
From James Carse, Breakfast at the Victory: The Mysticism of Everyday Life
In the concrete
Money is human happiness in the abstract;
He, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.
Schopenhauer
Sunday Quote: Unsettled
People wish to be settled;
only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Mindfulbalance 