Tag: Life

Everything is as it should be.

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An old man was asked, “What is it necessary to do to be saved?”
He was making rope, and without looking up from the work, he replied, “You are looking at it.”

Salvation is an everyday ordinary experience. If Christianity really does proclaim good news, then the good news is that everything is redeemed. Nothing is condemned. All that is left to do is to realize it. No condition of life precludes happiness. No condition of life increases it. For a given individual, making rope is as holy and effective and expressive as any ritual religious act. The simple act of making rope, or washing dishes, or walking to the office, or talking on the phone, does not imply anything other than itself. Nor is it meant to. Everything is as it should be. Give up the search. It is right here. It is obvious.

Gregory Mayers, Listen to the Desert: Secrets of Spiritual Maturity from the Desert Fathers and Mothers

Sunday Quote: In this ordinary life

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There are days when I am convinced that Heaven starts already, now, in this ordinary life, just as it is, in all its incompleteness, yet, this is where Heaven starts. See within yourself, if you can find it.
I walked through the field in front of the house, lots of swallows flying, everywhere! Some very near me. It was magical.

We are already one, yet we know it not

Thomas Merton

Happening now

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Our whole life can pass us by as we wait for something to happen…

You don’t go to heaven, you become heaven.

You don’t go to hell, you become hell.

And it’s happening now.

 Richard Rohr

Celebrate each moment

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Now every mortal has pain
and sweat is constant.
But if there is anything dearer than being alive,
it’s dark to me.

Euripides, Hippolytus, 428 BC

Comparing

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As long as the mind is comparing, there is no love, and the mind is always judging, comparing, weighing, looking to find where the weakness is. So where there is comparison, there is no love. When the mother and father love their children, they do not compare them, they do not compare their child with another child; it is their child and they love their child. But you want to compare yourself with something better, with something nobler, with something richer, so you create in yourself a lack of love. You are always concerned with yourself in relationship to somebody else. As the mind becomes more and more comparative, more and more possessive, more and more depending, it creates a pattern in which it gets caught, so it cannot look at anything anew, afresh.

And so it destroys that very thing, that very perfume of life, which is love.

J. Krishnamurti

Sunday Quote: Not anxious

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The unwanting soul sees what’s hidden,
but the ever-wanting soul sees only what it wants

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 1