May anxiety never linger about you. May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul. Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention. Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul. May you experience each day as a sacred gift, woven around the heart of wonder.
John O’Donohue, For Presence
In the light of all that is happening this year and this week, we all need to keep our hopes alive
There is an Ethiopian legend about a shepherd boy Alemayu that speaks to me of the power of hope. Alemayu had to spend the night on a bitterly cold mountain. He had only a very thin cloth to wear. To the amazement of all the villagers, he returned alive and well. When they asked him how he survived, he replied: ” ‘The night was bitter. When all the sky was dark, I thought I would die. Then far, far off I saw a shepherd’s fire on another mountain. I kept my eyes on the red glow in the distance, and I dreamed of being warm. And that is how I had the strength to survive.
Each one of us has a “shepherd’s fire on another mountain” that has kept our hope alive. This fire has given us the courage to recover our lost self and believe in the dreams that stir in our soul.
Joyce Rupp, Dear Heart, Come Home
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
Wendell Berry
You will either step forward into growth,
or you will step back into safety.
Maslow
Inner calmness is a way of being that can transform our lives. Taking one thing at a time as our focus, letting the imperfections of life be, fosters a sense of the present, a contentment with the moment. At first our meditation may develop in some ways but still be mixed with a quality of striving or judgment. As we sit, extraordinary levels of silence & peace can open for us.
We can learn how happiness comes from a heart at rest and not from changing outer circumstances.
Jack Kornfield
Ancient wisdom for the day that is in it. It can apply to both people outside of us or to the complaining voice inside of us that forever “argues” with how things are:
Get away from any man who always argues every time he talks.
Abbot Pastor in Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century
Mindfulbalance 