If we forgive life for not being what we told it to be, or expected, or wished, or longed for it to be,
we forgive ourselves for not being what we might have been also.
And then we can be what we are, which is boundless
John Tarrant
Forgive the year
Tag: impermanence
Leaving behind
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said..
A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made..
Or a garden planted….
It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as
you change something from the way it was before you touched it
into something that’s like you
after you take your hands away..
The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said..
The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all….the gardener will be there a lifetime.
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
The simple things
I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness:
a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea.
Nothing else.
Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
We can begin now
We may need to bid farewell to parts of ourselves rooted in safety but not in truth.
In the end we will only carry the reflection, “did I love well”. This will be the residue that either gladdens or aches our heart. As this year comes to an end, let us honor ourselves and those we love by letting go. We can bring fresh eyes to this moment and birth that which enlivens us. As for loving well, we can begin now. We can fly with the angels as we take ourselves lightly.
Ram Dass
A slip of light stays
Even in the dark of winter we get reminders of colour and light
Three times my life has opened.
Once, into darkness and rain.
Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and
starts to remember each time it enters the act of love.
Once, to the fire that holds all.
These three were not different.
You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.
But outside my window all day a maple has stepped
from her leaves like a woman in love with winter, dropping
the colored silks.
Neither are we different in what we know.
There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of
light stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,
or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.
Jane Hirshfield, The Lives of the Heart: Poems
A choice
Past and present join
in the winter solstice.
The days will stretch and we survive.
with losses, yes, and lessons too
to reap the honey of the hive
of history. The yield of what is given
insists a choice – to live; to thrive
Peter Fallon, 1951 – Irish Poet, A Winter Solstice
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