Tag: Life

…and when we are lost

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Just before turning back, his mission unfulfilled, we read in the Torah, “a certain man found Joseph and behold he was wandering in a field.” That man asked Joseph a two-word question, ma t’vakesh, “What are you seeking?

….this great short question, ma t’vakesh, was not a question about the location of his brothers, but a question about the location of his life. And what happened to Joseph in the fields happens to us in our lives. We meet angels and they change everything. The man who met Joseph in the fields was of course not a man, he was an angel, or to say it more precisely, he was not only a man he was also an angel. Judaism has always taught that it is quite possible to be both at the same time.

In Hebrew, the word for angel is malach, which means “messenger,” and so for Judaism any person with a message from God is a malach, an angel. When we are about to lose our way it seems to me absolutely obvious and unarguably true that God will send someone into the fields of our lives to ask us, ma t’vakesh, “What are you looking for?”

Marc Gellman, What are You Looking For?

When things are tough…

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Don’t despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish.

Because the best things are always growing in secret.

Ben Okri

Sunday quote: Forgiving life

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If we forgive life for not being what we told it to be, or expected, or wished, or longed for it to be,

we forgive ourselves for not being what we might have been also.

And then we can be what we are, which is boundless.

John Tarrant

Cultivate patience

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Officially Springtime, and the clocks go forward this evening, but Ireland yesterday saw rain, hail and even snow in some places. Seek refuge indeed…

Cultivate your strengths, your patience, and take your refuge. Get established in your embodiment so your somatic energies know the place where it’s alright to not know, to be uncertain, to not have a clue. From there, good will arise, the good will come. This is the act of faith. The Dhamma field is a tremendous blessing that occurs when one takes that step in the dark with faith … and lingers and stays.

Ajahn Sucitto

Unfinished

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The things that matter are unfinished paintings that everyone creates and no one owns. Rather we are created each time we touch the breath of being, and we are connected to everyone who ever lived each time we add a stroke. And sometimes we are briefly aware that we are living parts of the most elemental community of all, the community of life force that moves through everything.

Mark Nepo, The Unfinished Painting

Dropping the question

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The question of meaning in life is, as the Buddha thought, not edifying.

One must immerse oneself into the river of life and let the question drift away.

Irvin Yalom, The Gift of Therapy