Tag: impermanence

Start over

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The first days of a new Spring

There is no expected pace for inner learning. 

What we need to learn comes when we need it, no matter how old or young, no matter how many times we have to start over, no matter how many times we have to learn the same lesson. 

We fall down as many times as we need to , to learn how to fall and get up. We fall in love as many times as we need to , to learn how to hold and be held. We suffer pain as often as is necessary for us to learn how to break and how to heal. No one really likes this of course, but we deal with our dislike in the same way, again and again, until we learn what we need to know about the humility of acceptance.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

Signs of Spring

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Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today; 

And give us not to think so far away 

as the uncertain harvest; keep us here 

all simply in the springing of the year.

Robert Frost

Sunday Quote: tensed

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The greatest peril of misplaced worry

is that in keeping us constantly tensed against an imagined catastrophe,

it prevents us from fully living.

Seneca

another prayer for these times

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O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray and gather my thoughts to you. I cannot do it alone.
In me it is dark, but with you there is light.
I am lonely, but you do not desert me.
My courage fails me, but with you there is help.
I am restless, but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience.
I do not understand your ways, but you know the way for me.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran pastor imprisoned and executed by Nazis.







	


				
	






	
	

		
Slow down
	


	
					

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The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. 





Travel too fast,





and you miss all you are travelling for





Louis L’Amour, Western author

	


				
	






	
	

		
New Spring blossoms
	


	
					

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Long ago and far from here, a pilgrim was traveling in the hills. His thoughts were like clouds and dreams. He became lost in his walking.





He rounded a bend, and on the opposite wall of the canyon there was a peach tree in blossom. The blossoms were white with crimson in the center. No veil separated him from them, and suddenly the peach blossoms were him. The tree, the river, the birds, the sunlight, the morning cold – everything was peach blossoms. He laughed out loud. His name was Lingyun, and he wrote:





“For thirty years I searched for a Master Swordsman.
How many times did the leaves fall, and the branches burst into bud?
But from the moment I saw these peach blossoms,
I’ve had no doubts”.





It can be a shock  – the heart coming forth. Anything, anything that we meet, is a peach blossom. An email about cancer, a phone call, the winter moonrise. When we truly meet any part of the universe, we recognize it. It feels like I’m seeing my own face. The things I thought I needed to be happy, I don’t need. I don’t need the perfectly respectable life that everyone wants. Mainly I don’t need to know what happens next. My own life is an unknown path through peach blossoms.





John Tarrant, The World Catches Us Every Time