Tag: Joy

Holding the tension

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We must learn to hold the tension between the reality of the moment and the possibility that something better might emerge. The insight at the heart of nonviolence is that  we live in a tragic gap – a gap between the way things are and the way we know they might be. It is a gap that never has been and never will be closed. If we want to live nonviolent lives, we must learn to stand in the tragic gap, faithfully holding the tension between reality and possibility in hopes of being opened to a third way.  

Parker J. Palmer

Sunday Quote: Be fully present

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If we live everything,

life will be faithful to us.  

John O’Donohue

Patient

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The monk who bakes bread

no longer believes in the measure-for-measure God of the recipe books,

has little faith, if any, in the predestined endings set forth by timers,

the finely sifted claims to inerrancy held by cups and spoons.

Blended to life, call his a leavened devotion to resurrection

appearing from within each cracked tomb of grain,

the hunger that presses his hands dawn after dawn,

deep into the just-risen flesh.

Cowl white as the flour he scoops, mixes,

forms pat pat into loaves shaped like naves,

it is his chest, filled with the invisible yeast of breath,

that knows by heart the patient kneading together of days,

how long love takes to rise.

Daniel Skach-Mills, American poet.

In front of you

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A drop of water has the tastes of the water of the seven seas: there is no need to experience all the ways of worldly life.

The reflections of the moon on one thousand rivers are from the same moon: the mind must be full of light.


Hung Tzu-Ch’eng, 1572-1620, Chinese Philosopher

Remember

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Joy is the happiness

that doesn’t depend on what happens

David Steindl-Rast

Sunday Quote: Dancing with life

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God ..[is].. more a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more an experience than a dogma, more a personal relationship than an idea.

There is Someone dancing with you now, and you are not afraid of making mistakes.

Richard Rohr