Finally Spring has arrived after the warm sunshine of last weekend. Fresh growth everywhere.
Lord, the air smells good today,
straight from the mysteries within the inner courts of God.
A grace like new clothes thrown across the garden,
free medicine for everybody.
The trees in their prayer, the birds in praise, the first blue violets kneeling.
Whatever came from Being is caught up in being, drunkenly forgetting the way back.
Rumi, Lord, the Air Smells Good Today
Grace fills empty spaces,
but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it.
We must continually suspend the work of the imagination in its quest of filling the void within ourselves.
Simone Weil, 1909 – 1943, French Philosopher and political activist
In this lovely teaching, we are reminded of the need to start over and over again in each moment.
Alert to the needs of the journey
those on the path of awareness
like swans, glide on,
leaving behind their former resting places
Dhammapada 91
It’s a holiday Monday here…easier to start the week with gentle routines
The search is the meaning, the search for beauty, love, kindness and restoration in this difficult, wired and often alien modern world. The miracle is that we are here, that no matter how undone we’ve been the night before, we wake up every morning and are still here. It is phenomenal just to be. This idea overwhelms some people. I have found that the wonder of life is often most easily recognizable through habits and routines – If you don’t do ritual things in order, the paper doesn’t read as well, and you’ll be thrown off the whole day. But when you can sit for a while at your table, reach for your coffee, look out the window at the sky or some branches, then back down at the paper or a book, everything feels right for the moment, which is maybe all we have.
Anne Lamott
Who are you? Never mind all your fears and insecurities or all the things you have or would like to have. Forget that you want to be a better person. I’m not asking who you believe yourself to be, but rather what you experience in those moments when you are not caught up in your wants and fears. What do you rely on to give meaning to your life?
Even if you never consciously grapple with these questions about your true nature, certain circumstances will require you to pay attention. Life delivers you a series of challenges in the form of small and large good fortune, as well as petty and great misfortune. In the struggle to learn how to respond to the resulting joy, pain, and confusion, you are repeatedly challenged to seek and to act from your essence.
Phillip Moffit, The Language of the Soft Heart
Once thoughts are quieted, the Original Face appears. Thoughts can be compared to clouds. When clouds vanish, the moon appears. The moon of suchness is the Original Face. Thoughts are also like the fogging of a mirror. When you wipe away all condensation, a mirror reflects clearly. Quiet your thoughts and behold your Original Face before you were born!
Daito, Zen Master, (1282-1337)
I asked the poet Tony Hoagland what he thought about fear. He said fear was the ghost of an experience: we fear the recurrence of a pain we once felt, and in this way fear is like a hangover. The memory of our pain is a pain unto itself, and thus feeds our fear like a foyer with mirrors on both sides.
And then he quoted Auden: “And ghosts must do again/What gives them pain.”
Mary Ruefle, On Fear
Mindfulbalance 