Ever Changing

I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever dying,  there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates...for I can see that in the midst of death, life persists, in the midst of untruth,  truth persists, in the midst of darkness,  light persists.

Mohatma Gandhi, Spiritual Message (London, Kingsley Hall, 20 October 1931)

Sunday Quote: See true worth

Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.

Schopenhauer

 

Dance

Our physical space may be more restricted, but our hearts can still dance

May my ashes, when you have them, friend,

and give them to the ocean

leap in the froth of the waves,

still loving the moment,

still ready, beyond all else,

to dance for the world.

Mary Oliver, Prayer

Sunday Quote: No feeling is final

Let everything happen to you.

Beauty and terror. 

Just keep going. 

No feeling is final .

Rilke

Darkness and light

We blink a thousand times a day. A thousand times a day the world goes dark. A thousand times a day we wake. We can’t escape this opening and closing. Even as you read this, your eyes, along with your heart and mind, are blinking –  opening and closing repeatedly, no matter what you do. It is part of being human.

Yet so much depends on which you see as home – being open or closed. Do you see life as one stream of light interspersed with nights of dark, or as one stream of darkness interspersed with days of light? Though there will never be an answer, what we believe about the nature of life matters. It lifts or burdens our days. So ask yourself, more than once, Is life one long miracle of feeling interspersed with moments of breaking? Do we repeatedly fall into our humanness from never-ending light? Or is life one long painful breaking interspersed with moments of wonder? Do we struggle up from the unending dark briefly into glimpses of light?

Mark Nepo, The Book Of Awakening

Sparks

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both, are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Letter to a Young Activist During Troubled Times: Do not Lose Heart, We were made for these Times