Don’t change: Desire to change is the enemy of love.
Don’t change yourselves: Love yourselves as you are.
Don’t change others: Love all others as they are.
Don’t change the world: It is in God’s hands and he knows.
And if you do that….. change will occur marvellously in its own way and in its own time
Yield to the current of life unencumbered by baggage.
Anthony de Mello sj.
Saw some Giant Redwood trees walking in the grounds of Emo Court last weekend. They are quite young compared to the ones in California – only 170 years – being planted in 1853, but still an impressive size
Some of these trees have been here since Jesus walked on water
Some of these trees have been here
since Vikings drove their boats
onto the shores of Newfoundland…
Some of these trees have survived lightning strikes and forest fires…..
They have grown beyond
their trauma and focus now
on the daily climb, the adding-on
of needle and bark, on nature’s drive
to rise above and see beyond
until the day when death will fell them
and the earth will add them to its riches.
We can be like these trees, pull on the layers of living like fine
new garments, house the needy
in the caverns of our grief, grow
beyond the stories of our scars
stretch our branches toward the bristling stars.
Tamara Madison, American poet, Sequoia Sempervirens [extract], from the A Year of Being Here blog
Hokusai says look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing.
He says everyone of us is a child,
everyone of us is ancient,
everyone of us has a body.
He says everyone of us is frightened.
He says everyone of us has to find
a way to live with fear..…
He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat
yourself as long as it is interesting.
He says keep doing what you love...
It doesn’t matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.
Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.
Peace is life living through you.
He says don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid.
Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.
Let life live through you.
Roger Keyes, 1942-2020 American professor of East Asian studies, art historian and poet, Hokusai says [extracts]
Hokusai (1760-1849) was a Japanese artist, best known as author of the woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
Early Spring growth is all around, reminding us to trust…
Settling, white dew
does not discriminate,
each drop its home.
Nishiyama Sōin, 1605 – 1682 Japanese poet, founder of the Danrin school of haikai poetry
Most people today seems to think that sacrifice means giving something up. This is how shallow our religious sense has become.
Sacrifice really involves the art of drawing energy from one level and reinvesting it at another level to produce a higher form of consciousness.
Robert Johnson, Jungian Analyst, Balancing Heaven and Earth
The start of the season of Lent in the Christian tradition. The word Lent comes perhaps from the Old English and refers to the lengthening of the days in Spring. Most spiritual and wisdom traditions around the world have periods when we are encouraged to simplify things down to better see what is important or to dedicate more time to reflection and silence.
The past decade has seen an unparalleled assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on anything. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible. The obsession with current events is relentless. We are made to feel that at any point, somewhere in the globe, something may occur to sweep away old certainties, something that, if we failed to learn about it instantaneously, could leave us wholly unable to comprehend ourselves or our fellows.…
The need to diet, which we know so well in relation to food, and which runs so contrary to our natural impulse, is something we now have to relearn in relation to knowledge, people and ideas.
We require periods of fast in the life of our minds no less than in that of our bodies.
Alian de Botton, School of life: Distraction-concentration
Mindfulbalance 
