Do not seek perfection in a changing world.
Instead perfect your love.
Master Sengstan, Third Zen Patriarch, 7th Century
Tag: inspiration
Estblishing patterns of rest
The extent to which we are divorced from the complementary rhythms of restfulness and creativity is the extent to which we are cut off from patterns of well-being within ourselves and in our relationships. If we fail to establish regular practices of stillness and rest, our creativity will be either exhausted or shallow. Our countenance, instead of reflecting a vitality of fresh creative energy that is sustained by the restorative depths of stillness, will be listless or frenetic. This is true collectively as it is individually,and applies as much to human creativity as it does to the earth’s fruitfulness. Creativity without rest, and productivity without renewal, leads to exhaustion of our inner resources.
J. Philip Newell, The Book of Creation
Sunday Quote: Open a window
Keep knocking,
and the joy inside will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.
Rumi
Empty branches
To have loved is everything,
I loved, once, a hummingbird who came every afternoon– the freedom-loving male–
who flew by himself to sample the sweets of the garden, to sit on a high, leafless branch with his red throat gleaming.
And then, he came no more.
And I’m still waiting for him, ten years later,
to come back, and he will, or he will not.
There is a certain commitment that each of us is given,
that has to do with another world,
if there is one.
I remember you, hummingbird.
I think of you every day even as I am still here,
soaked in color, waiting year after honey-rich year.
Mary Oliver, An Empty Branch in the Orchard
Sunday Quote: Noticing
Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them.
The least we can do is try to be there
Annie Diliard
A Path with Heart
A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you . . . Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question . . . Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use.
Carlos Casteneda.
We set out on the road to freedom when we no longer let our compulsions or passions govern us. We are freed when we begin to put justice, heartfelt relationships, and the service of others and the truth over and above our own needs for love and success or our fears of failure and of relationships. To be free is to know who we are with all that is beautiful, all the brokenness in us; it is to love our values, to embrace them, and to develop them; it is to be anchored in a vision and a truth but also to be open to others and so, to change. Freedom lies in discovering that the truth is not a set of fixed certitudes, but a mystery we enter into, one step at a time. It is a process of going deeper and deeper into an unfathomable reality.
In this journey of integrating our experiences and our values, and of what we might learn as we listen to others, there may be a period of anguish. We need to find links between the old and the new, links that will permit the integration of new, consciousness-expanding truths into what we already know and are living – our existing certitudes. As human sciences develop and the world evolves, we are called to grow into a new and deeper understanding of the Source o the universe and of life. As we participate in this, our sense of the true expands. Freedom is to be in awe of this Source, of the beauty and diversity of people, and of the universe. It is to contemplate the height and breadth of all that is true.
Jean Vanier, Becoming Human
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