Traveller, your footprints
are the only road,
There is no path.
Paths are made by walking.
Antonio Machado
Tag: inspiration
The monsters that scare us
It is striking how much of our life is tinged with fear. We all have fears inside ourselves, monsters and dragons that raise their heads from time to time. When they show themselves we can default to a smaller, less competent version of ourselves and feel that we are not capable of achieving anything.
However, as Rilke’s extraordinary text tells us, when we turn towards our fears many of them dissolve. The things that frightens us can actually help us grow. Running from them ultimately is running from a place of real grace. That which is most alien will become our friend. The very difficulties become our path of growth.
We, however are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if we could only arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
Quietness
Better is one handful of quietness
than two hands full of toil
and grasping after the wind.
Ecclesiastes 4:6
Sunday Quote
The one guardian of life is love,
but to be loved you must love.
Marsilio Ficino
Life is a blessing
When we notice and celebrate the little things each day, then life becomes a place of wonder, celebration and of gratitude. A walk along the river in the forest, the taste of a dessert, support when someone is ill, encouragement and advice along the road. This poem from Mary Oliver sees blessing in the smallest of creatures, in the shortest of moments. Such an appreciation of life helps us when we are tempted to take the little slights of each day too seriously.
What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that’s all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They’re small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing.
Mary Oliver, Hum
The Sun Never Says
Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”
Look what happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole Sky.
Hafiz
Mindfulbalance 
