We learn, grow and become compassionate and generous
as much through exile as homecoming,
as much through loss as gain,
as much through giving things away as in receiving what we believe to be our due.
David Whyte
Tag: Life
Our actual path is unchartered
What does it take to use the life we already have in order to make us wiser rather than more stuck?
The answer to these questions seems to have to do with bringing everything that we encounter to the path. Everything naturally had a ground, path, and fruition. But it is also said that the path itself is both the ground and the fruition. The path is the goal. This path has one very distinct characteristic: it is not prefabricated. It doesn’t already exist. The path that we’re talking about is the moment-by-moment evolution of our experience, the moment-by-moment evolution of the world of phenomena, the moment-by-moment evolution of our thoughts and emotions. The path is uncharted. It comes into existence moment-by-moment and at the same time drops away behind us.
When we realize that the path is the goal, there’s a sense of workability. Everything that occurs in our confused mind we can regard as the path. Everything is workable.
Pema Chodron
Stop fighting with your life
To listen to the soul is to stop fighting with life – to stop fighting when things fall apart, when they don’t go our way, when we get sick, when we are betrayed or mistreated or misunderstood. To listen to the soul is to slow down, to feel deeply, to see ourselves clearly, to surrender to discomfort and uncertainty, and to wait.
Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open
Sunday Quote: Even in times of difficulty, keep planting
Faith is hope in the unseen. Often we cannot see the results of the efforts we are putting in …
Even if the Hour of Resurrection comes up,
and one of you is holding a sapling in your hand….
finish planting it.
The Prophet Mohammed
The struggle between here and somewhere else
We want the spring to come and the winter to pass.
We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss – we want more and more and then more of it.
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living…
Marie Howe, American poet, What the Living Do
With thanks to allchannels.blogspot.com
Sunday Quote: Like children
In time we are present only
by forgetting time.
Wendell Berry, 2007.IV
