This morning, the sun rose without fanfare, yet it claimed the sky.
The light touches everything – the dew, the stone, the anxious heart – and whispers: You are seen. You are held.
It’s a beautiful day not because it’s perfect, but because within its hours lies the relentless, gentle persistence of grace.
Pádraig Ó Tuama, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community
To those who will come after, I say
Life is not for waiting.
Rumi, Gnostic Donkeys (2)
Almost no one is exempt from trauma. While some people have it in a more pronounced way than others, the unpredictable and unstable nature of things makes life inherently traumatic.
What the Buddha revealed through his dreams was that, true as this may be, the mind, by its very nature, is capable of holding trauma much the way a mother naturally relates to a baby.
One does not have to be helpless and fearful, not does one have to be hostile and self-reverential. the mind knows intuitively how to find a middle path. Its implicit relational capacity is hardwired
Mark Epstein, The Trauma of Everyday Life
The Buddhists say there are 121 states of consciousness.
Of these, only three involve misery or suffering.
Most of us spend our time moving back and forth between these three.
Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation
trust your heart
if the seas catch fire
(and live by love
though the stars walk backward)
e e cummings, dive for dreams
Picked some ripe blackberries beside the woodland path I walked along yesterday evening. Freely given, like all of life, and not to be taken, as we say, “for granted.” The only real response is gratefulness.
Be still, my soul, and steadfast.
Earth and heaven both are still watching
though time is draining from the clock
and your walk, that was confident and quick,
has become slow.
So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.
Mary Oliver, The Gift
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