What are we when there is no one doing anything, no one attaining anything, no place to go?
There “is” no place to go.
The whole foundation is already here in each one of us.
It is the same in all of us.
There is only one foundation, which is presence, wholeness, boundless love.
Toni Packer, The Wonder of Presence: And the Way of Meditative Inquiry
In the rhythm of the Christian Tradition, Holy Saturday was a day of waiting, of bare church decoration, of things pared down and distractions minimized.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. T. S. Eliot
Wise intention and skillful service need to be nourished by periods of quiet and prayer. Every great tradition includes some from of the Sabbath. In the West we inherited the blessing of the Christian and Jewish Sabbath. Muslims have Friday as their holy day, and likewise Hindus and Buddhists renew their vows of simplicity on full moon, new moon, and quarter moon days. When I was young, Massachusetts had Sabbath “Blue Laws” requiring all forms of business to stop on Sundays. But now, one generation later, we have twenty-four-hour supermarkets and twenty-four-hour banking, seven days a week; our consumer society has claimed the right to operate without constraint. This is a recipe for burnout.
Jack Kornfield, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the heart grows wise on the Spiritual Path
Heartbreak is not a visitation, but a path that human beings follow through even the most average life. Heartbreak is how we mature; yet we use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an unrequited love, a shattered dream, a child lost before their time. But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.
Heartbreak asks us not to look for an alternative path, because there is no alternative path. It is a deeper introduction to what we love and have loved, an inescapable and often beautiful question, something or someone who has been with us all along, asking us to be ready for the last letting go.
David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.
A reflective life means hitting the pause button from time to time. Today marks the start of Holy Week in the Western tradition, the most important week in terms of giving meaning to life.
Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise
Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
By three methods we may learn wisdom:
First, by reflection, which is noblest;
Second, by imitation, which is easiest;
and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius, born 551 B.C.
Today is the Spring Equinox – from the Latin “equal night”, when there is equal light and dark in our day – marking the beginning of Spring for countries in the Northern Hemisphere.
We, the older ones,
Call it Spring,
And we have been through it
Many times.
But there is still nothing
Like the children bringing home
Such happiness
In their small hands.
Mary Oliver, Children, It’s Spring
This old Celtic prayer from Scotland is appropriate for two reasons today – the feast of Saint Patrick, the patron of Ireland and because of the weather we have had this week:
May the blessing of the rain be on you,
may it beat upon your Spirit and wash it fair and clean,
and leave there a shining pool where the blue of Heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.
And may the blessing of the earth be on you,
soft under your feet as you pass along the roads,
soft under you as you lie out on it, tired at the end of day;
and may it rest easy over you when, at last, you lie out under it.
May it rest so lightly over you that your soul may be out from under it quickly;up and off and on its way to God.
And now may the Lord bless you, and bless you kindly.
Amen.
Mindfulbalance 