What is the sacred?

Wisdom consists in doing the next thing that you have to do,

doing it with your whole heart,

and finding delight in doing it.

And the delight is the sense of the sacred.

Helen Luke, 1904 – 1995, Jungian Analyst and writer

Start now

Starting here, what do you want to remember?…
Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this 
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

William Stafford, You Reading this, Be Ready (extract)

Sunday Quote: waiting

It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life

waiting to start living.

Eckhart Tolle

Another moment, another chance

 I know now, 
after fifty years, 
that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, 
leaving/returning, never stops.
The whole of life is about another chance

Jeanette Winterson, Why be Happy when you Could Be Normal?

Being as is

The wise person man, perceiving wealth and craving,
Knows them to be empty illusion;

Food and clothes sustain our body and life;

But I advise you to learn

Being as is.

When it’s time,  I leave my hermitage and go,

And there’s nothing to be left behind

Layman Pang, 740 – 808, Chinese Chan layman

Recognizing, not pursuing

In my life-long impatience, how much I have missed. Last night, washing the dishes, I really looked at my iron frying pan in the dishwater. The light made visible for a moment a tiny rainbow — a light through water revealing all the colors of life. It is so easy to miss the tiny symbols. Finding them is quite different from the business of trying to hatch up big symbolic experiences. It is recognition, not pursuit, of meaning — recognition of the sacramental, of the intersection of the two worlds, breaking through unsought because one is attending.

Helen Luke, 1904 – 1995, Jungian Analyst and writer