Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually.
Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us.
Mary Oliver, Franz Marc’s Blue Horses
Tag: Joy
Sunday Quote: Hold things lightly
Aeschylus says, “There is no effort in what is divine.” There is an easiness in salvation which is more difficult to us than all our efforts.
In one of Grimm’s stories there is a competition between a giant and a little tailor to see which is the stronger. The giant throws a stone so high that it takes a very long time before it comes down again. The little tailor lets a bird fly and it does not come down at all. Anything without wings always comes down again in the end.
Simone Weil, Waiting on God
Stilling the mind’s questions
I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.
Mary Oliver, What Gorgeous Thing
Letting go of resistance
In the garden of Gethsemane, the last words Jesus spoke were, “Stay awake.” In fact, he says it twice. The Buddha offered the same wisdom; “Buddha” actually means “I am awake.”
Staying awake comes not from willpower but from a wholehearted surrender to this moment – as it is. It’s largely a matter of letting go of resistance to what the moment offers or of clinging to a past moment. It is an acceptance of the full reality of what is right here and now. It will be the task of your whole lifetime.
Richard Rohr, Just This
Learned helplessness
It is good to remember that …there is a part of you that has always said yes. There is a part of you that is Love itself, and that is what we must fall into. It is already there. Once you move your identity to that level of deep inner contentment, you will realize you are drawing upon a Life that is much larger than your own and from a deeper abundance. Once you learn this, why would you ever again settle for scarcity in your life? “I’m not enough! This is not enough! I do not have enough!” I am afraid this is the way culture trains you to think. It is a kind of learned helplessness. The Gospel message is just the opposite — inherent power.
Richard Rohr
In the present
Move through life living from one moment to the other,
wholly absorbed in the present,
carrying with you so little from the past that your spirit could pass through the eye of a needle;
as little distracted by the worries of the future as the birds of the air and the flowers of the field.
Anthony de Mello
Mindfulbalance 